British Canals. By Edwin A. Pratt. (John Murray. 2s. 6d,
net.)—The case for the canals has of late been stated with much energy ; Mr. Pratt states the case against them. This is, of course, to put the matter somewhat crudely. What we have hero is a powerful argument against some schemes that have been recently propounded. One of these is to nationalise or munici- palise the canals,—i.e., to give them the support of the taxes or the rates in a competition with railways, which are private enter- prises, and are already heavily handicapped by the weight of the burdens which they have to bear. When a railway has to pay some two-thirds of the rates of the parish through which it passes, it would certainly be a little hard to use those very rates in backing up a competing carrier. This is obvious enough. Mr. Pratt sets out other considerations, among them the cost of adapting the existing canals to altered conditions of trade—let any one imagine the expense of doubling the width of the Stroudwater Canal where it runs through a tunnel—but we must leave these for our readers to examine for themselves.
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