104 CANALS. 



and more have, for cheap transit facihties, and to consider the concurrent 

 testimony of every progressive comitry as to the importance of water-transit 

 without wishing to see the lessons of foreign experience apphed in ? 

 broadly-conceived pohcy to the general control and direction of a system 

 of waterways, natural and artificial, not inferior probably, if rendered effi- 

 cient, to those draining any similar area in the world. The gist of the whole 

 matter is admirably summed up in the following resolution of the Fourth 

 International Congress on Inland Navigation : — " The existence and de- 

 velopment together of railways and waterways is desirable, first, because 

 these two means of transport are the complements of each other, and ought 

 to contribute each according to its special merits to the public good ; second, 

 because, viewed broadly, the industrial and commercial development which 

 will result from the improvement of the means of communication must, in 

 the end, profit both railways and waterways." 



(c) Sketch of the History of Inland Navigation in Ireland. 



If our system of Inland Navigation, as a whole, has so far proved dis- 

 astrous as an investment of capital, it cannot be said it was from lack of an 

 adequate conception of what a network of waterways in a country like 

 Ireland should be. So far back as 17 15, the Irish Parliament passed a 

 statute for encouraging a scheme of drainage and inland navigation of truly 

 national proportions, which — though executed in a spasmodic and piecemeal 

 fashion — was still the goal at which all subsequent legislation aimed. The 

 interests of arterial drainage and the interests of navigation were not, it is 

 true, always reconcilable, and a good deal of misdirected effort was caused 

 by hesitancy between the relative importance of the one and the other. 

 But, on the whole, the scheme was a sound one in its inception, and its 

 failure must, in my opinion, be looked for in the nature of the machinery 

 originally provided to carry it out, and in the successive shiftings of respon- 

 sibiHty for its conduct and maintenance between State departments, mixed 

 boards, local companies, and private companies, rather than in any intrinsic 

 causes. The following interesting sketch of the early history of Inland 

 Navigation in Ireland is taken from the Report [C.-3173] of Lord Monck's 

 Commission of 1883 : — 



The Report of a Committee of the Irish House of Commons on Inland 



Navigation, presented on the 23rd June, 1800, states 



First Statute on ^'^^^ " I^l^tid Navigation has been an object of Parlia- 



Inland Navigation "^^ntary attention from a very early period, the journals 



• T 1 A AHA statmg proceedmgs and grants from the year 1703, 



in Irelana, 1715. j^^^ ^j^g j^j.^^ statute on the subject was an Act passed 



by the Irish Parliament in the second year of George I. 



(A.D. 1715), and entitled " An Act to encourage the draining and improving of 



the Boggs and unprofitable low grounds, and for easing and despatching thri 



inland carriage and conveyance of snoods from one part to another within this 



kingdom." 



This Act, after reciting that the great tracts of bog and fenny waste 

 grounds, which encumber the midland parts of this kingdom, are not only 

 useless to the owners, but an occasion of a corrupt air, and a retreat and 



