2 . -: -History of Inland Transport 



tries on the Continent of Europe or else aided materially in 

 the expansion of industries as the disadvantages and draw- 

 backs began to disappear. 



That industries existed when internal communication was 

 still in a primitive stage in this country is true enough ; but 

 they were " domestic " rather than " national," and it was 

 not until the advent of better means of transport that it became 

 possible for them to begin to pass from the one stage to the 

 other, and, at the same time, to exercise so important an 

 influence on our advancement as a nation. It is no less true 

 that British commerce, conducted by ships obtaining ready 

 access to foreign ports by traversing ocean highways, had made 

 much greater progress at an early period in our history than in- 

 dustries dependent on inland highways that were then either 

 non-existent or scarcely passable ; yet, though navigation might 

 advance still further, and though navigators might discover 

 still more new countries, commerce could not hope to attain 

 to the expansion it subsequently underwent until the indus- 

 tries whose operations were to be facilitated by improvement 

 in land communication supplied the merchants with the home 

 commodities which they required for sale or exchange in the 

 markets of the world. Whatever, again, the natural resources 

 of a country and such resources have certainly been great 

 in our own they may be of little material value until they 

 can be readily moved from the place where they exist to the 

 place where they can be used ; and even then it is necessary 

 that the cost of transport shall not be unduly high. 



Transport and communication by land and water have thus 

 become what Prof. J. Shield Nicholson rightly calls, in his 

 " Principles of Political Economy," " the bases of industrial 

 organisation " ; and it is to industrial organisation that a 

 country such as ours has been indebted in a pre-eminent degree 

 both for its material prosperity and for the position it occupies 

 to-day among the nations of the world. But just as British 

 engineers long regarded the subject of road construction and 

 road repairs as beneath their notice, and left such work to be 

 done by any parish " surveyor," subsidised pauper or " Blind 

 Jack of Knaresboro'," who thought fit to engage in it, so have 

 most writers of history, while zealously recording the actions 

 of kings, of diplomatists, of politicians, and of warriors who may 

 have made a great stir in their day but who took only a very 



