FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 237 



Mr Poulteney Bigelow. More serious is the criti- 

 cism of the Canal on sternly economic grounds. It is 

 quite conceivable that a party attaching no import- 

 ance to overseas expansion, and deprecating every 

 attempt at aggrandisement outside the Continent, 

 might honestly see in the scheme a costly and 

 unproductive chimera. It is not indeed clear that 

 the Canal will, within a reasonable time from its 

 opening, even if we exclude the sums paid by the 

 American Government to the former Company and 

 to the State of Panama, pay fair interest on the 

 immense amount of capital sunk in its construction. 

 It is certain that Washington has not embarked on 

 the work solely to swell the public revenues. One 

 need not be a financier to realise the severe 

 competition against which the Panama Canal will 

 from its opening have to fight, for an atlas and a 

 foot-rule will prove it. The rival that obviously 

 suggests itself is Suez, and it is a curious irony of 

 fate that the waterway between Asia and Africa 

 will for ever avenge the memory of its creator by 

 robbing the newer canal of Australian traffic that 

 it would otherwise have enjoyed. Suez brings 

 Sydney a thousand miles at least nearer London 

 than Panama, and without a doubt the Suez tolls, 

 at present considerably higher than those planned 

 for Panama, will be brought down to meet the new 

 competitor. The Horn route, on the other hand, 

 has only the absence of tolls in its favour. Apart 

 from this, the saving in time by Panama will be 

 very great — eighteen days, for instance, between 

 Plymouth and Callao. These are but two of the 

 many cases that have to be considered before arriv- 

 ing at any estimate of the probable volume of 



