CANALS. 119 



This navigation extends from Adare, County Limerick, to the River 



Shannon. The works are about eight miles in length, 



The Maigue and they were executed at a cost of between ;£"2,C)00 



Navigation. and ^^^3,000 in 171 5, under the first Act for promoting 



Inland Navigation in Ireland. After being vested 



first in the Commissioners, and then in the Directors-General of Inland 



Navigation, these works were transferred in 1831 to the Board of Works. 



The history of Irish Inland Navigation is not exhilarating reading. Con- 

 ceived on broad national lines, the system of artificial waterways in this 

 country has been executed in a singularly spasmodic and haphazard fashion. 

 Control and responsibihty for its extension and maintenance have been, 

 from the start, so separated and shifted from one authority to another that 

 no policy of continuous development was possible. Again, opinion, even 

 expert opinion, hesitated frequently between the claims of navigation and 

 drainage — wherever their interests were not coincident — and hesitation led 

 to inaction. Since the railway era, the question of inleind navigation had 

 practically been neglected, in these countries, till within the last two decades 

 or so. In this inadequate survey of a very interesting but a very complex 

 subject, I have endeavoured to suggest some of the classes of consideration — 

 mainly economic — that would have to be kept in view in a general considera- 

 tion of the transit possibilities of our waterways. 



