POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
STEAMSHIPS FOE THE CHANNEL PASSAOE. 
Br C. W. MERKIFIELD, F.E.S. 
[PLATE XCII.] 
T he ambitious schemes for the formation of harbours on 
one or both sides of the channel, and the still more ex- 
travagant proposals for tunnels and bridges, can hardly be con- 
sidered as being of any immediate public interest. An estimate 
of the profit and loss account is sufficient to settle this part of 
the question to the satisfaction of any but an enthusiastic 
inventor or an interested promoter. Not that it would be at 
all safe to assert that such things will never be done, or that 
they may not be useful when done. Bigger bubbles than these, 
and blown with less soap, too, have been looked upon before 
now as solid investments by confiding capitalists. In all these 
schemes the dead-weight charge of interest on an enormous 
capital is quite out of proportion to any probable traffic return. 
It is easy enough to talk in general terms of absorbing the 
whole of the continental passenger traffic, increased by a safe 
and comfortable means of transit ; but in the first place it is 
not possible to secure all or nearly all of it at renumerative 
rates, and secondly the whole annual number of passengers is 
very limited. We in England are apt to talk as if the channel 
passage were of even greater importance to Europe than to 
ourselves. The fact is the reverse. It is a primary matter to 
us, a secondary affair to France and Belgium, and a thing of 
very small concern to anybody else. It is the English who 
have most to gain by it ; and on England, therefore, in some 
shape or other, the charge will ultimately fall. In so far as 
they depend upon passenger traffic across the channel, large 
engineering works cannot be renumerative. It is true that a 
company may be promoted, and that it may make the fortune 
VOL. XII. — NO. XLVI. B 
