Decline of Canals 301 



them to combine among themselves and establish through 

 routes, converting series of small canals into connected water- 

 ways under one and the same control, if not actually owned by 

 one and the same company, as was being so actively done with 

 the railways. 



Some action had certainly been taken in this direction. 

 The Birmingham Canal system of to-day is composed of three 

 canal companies which had amalgamated prior to 1846, 

 supplemented by a fourth which joined them in that year. 

 The Shropshire Union, also, is formed of four canal companies 

 originally independent. But these are only exceptions to the 

 rule, for though the Joint Select Committee of 1872, following 

 up what had already been done at an earlier period, re- 

 commended that the utmost facilities should be given for 

 amalgamations between canal companies, few of such amal- 

 gamations have, as the Final Report of the Royal Commission 

 on Canals and Waterways points out, taken place since the 

 full establishment of railways. Goods sent to-day by canal 

 from Birmingham, for instance, to London, to Liverpool or 

 to Hull will pass over waterways controlled by from six to 

 eight different authorities, according to the route followed. 



One must, however, recognise the fact that the securing of 

 uniformity of gauge and the establishment of through routes 

 presented far greater difficulties in the case of artificial water- 

 ways than in that of railways. The physical geography of 

 England is wholly unfavourable to efficient cross-country water 

 transport, and this fact, in itself, is sufficient to render im- 

 practicable any such scheme of canal resuscitation as that 

 which has been put forward by the recent Royal Commission. 



The physical condition of England in relation to the building 

 of canals is well shown in the article on " Canals " published 

 in " Rees' Cyclopaedia " (1819) where it is said, in this con- 

 nection : 



" Great Britain . . . has a range of high land passing 

 nearly its whole length, which divides the springs and rain 

 waters that fall to the opposite coasts : we shall call this range 

 dividing the eastern and western rivers of Britain the grand 

 ridge. . . . No less than 22 of our canals now do or are in- 

 tended to pass this grand ridge, forming as many navigable 

 connections between the rivers of the east and west seas ! . . . 

 The Dudley canal crosses this grand ridge twice, the two ends 



