pointed at the other extremity, to the removal of the obftacles that prefented themselves at Killaloe, by which means the grain and other productions of the circumjacent country might have been exported while the remaining works were profecuted. But having neither plan nor object in view, they began in the centre of the river, so that every useful purpose of improvement must neceffarily have been deferred till the laft hour. The waste of Parliamentary grants is perhaps the flightest part of the injury, which the nation has fuftained by the ignorance of those, who were formerly entrusted with the management of inland navigation. An immoderate expenditure, together with repeated blunders and disappointments has fickened the public mind on the subject, and the odium due alone to the guilty, is by a natural, though unjuft decree, transferred to the innocent. Inland Navigation has been condemned as a fpeculative and impracticable idea, because it has been mifconducted. But in truth the fault did not exist fo much in the perfons appointed, as in the mistaken policy of entrufting to commiffioners works fo various and intricate, requiring an unremitted and minute fuperintendance, during their formation, and even after they were perfected.* Such *"In feveral different parts of Europe, the toll or lock "duty upon a canal, is the property of private persons, whose "private intereft obliges them to keep up the canal. If it is "not kept in tolerable order, the navigation neceffarily ceases "altogether, Such an attention, it is to be feared, is not attain. able through any other medium than that of felf intereft; and therefore the only practicable means of promoting inland navigation in Ireland is by vefting it as a property, upon certain conditions, and under certain reftrictions, in the hands of individuals or affociated companies, and granting them fuch encouragement as may be found neceffary to induce them to undertake works of this nature. The quantum of the bounty to be given by the public, fhould however be proportioned to the difficulty, expence, and magnitude of the undertaking, and fhould alfo bear fome affinity to the rate of tolls allowed to be taken, as well as to the probable amount of fuch tolls, from the commerce likely to be tranfported on fuch navigation. But it has been asked, and indeed the question does not, at firft fight, appear devoid of fome fhew of reason, Wherefore fhould bounties be granted in Ireland for carrying on an inland navigation, when it is well known that, in England, none are demanded, or even thought of? The "altogether, and along with it, the whole profit which they can "make by the tolls. If the tolls were put under the manage. "ment of commissioners who had themselves no intereft in them, they might be lefs attentive to the maintenance of the works "which produced them. The canal of Languedoc, colt the "king of France and the province, upwards of thirteen millions "of livres, (900,000l. fterling) when that great work was finish"ed, the most likely method, it was found, of keeping it in "conftant repair, was to make a prefent of the tolls to Requett, "the engineer, who planned and conducted the work.” An Inquiry into the Nature and Caufes of the Wealth of obvious anfwer to this objection is, that canals in England are the effect of internal wealth and population, an improved ftate of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. In Ireland we muft look to inland navigation as an efficient caufe of producing, or at least as the best means of facilitating thofe happy effects.In England it is almost impoffible to extend a canal ten miles in any direction without interfecting two, three, or more populous and manufacturing towns. In Ireland it may be expected, that in the process of a few years, manufacturing towns may be raised on the banks of our navigable waters. Give me leave further to add, that if the Parliament of England had granted bounties on the feveral canals made in that country, on condition of keeping down the tolls of fuch canals on the carriage of the neceffaries of life, it would have acted wifely. In truth the grand principle of inland navigation feems not to have been fufficiently attended to, either in Great Britain or Ireland. That principle is " to render the pro"duce of land as great and as valuable as poffible, .. by procuring for it as extenfive a market as pof fible by the establishment of the freeft, the "eafieft, and the leaft expenfive communication between the different parts of the country, "which can be done only by means of the best "roads or the best navigable canals." * To this end all the great navigations fhould have been made folely at the public expense, *An Inquiry into the Nature and Caufes of the Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith. and and fubjected to fuch tolls only as fhould appear to be neceffary for keeping the works in repair. This has ever been the principle of the Chinese, to which the greatnefs of their empire may be attributed. The fame principle governed Lewis XIVth in making the canal of Languedoc, and wherever a deviation from this principle has taken place, the public has been deprived of a confiderable proportion of the advantages of inland navigation. It has long been a queftion of political oeconomy, whether it be better for a nation, in time of peace, to lay up the redundance of her revenue in bank in order to provide for the future exigencies of war, or whether it be better policy to borrow money when war becomes indifpenfible, in order to profecute it with vigour, and to charge pofterity with the debt, and to apply the future redundance of revenue in peace, to reduce it by degrees.-Let nations like Holland and England, who are nearly arrived at the highest pitch of internal improvement, and are at the fame time burthened with heavy taxes, difpute this point. But let Ireland whofe fituation is diametrically oppofite to that of both those countries, whofe debts and taxes are inconfiderable, and whofe internal improvement is more than proportionably fmall,-let her extend the fyftem that he has in part adopted, and the benefits of which are already manifeft in the encrease of her agriculture, and the extenfion of her linen and cotton manufactures.-Let Ireland, I fay, apply a larger portion of her revenue and every poffible faving in her civil establishment, in well directed bounties on internal improvement, which will repay her more than tenfold whenever she may have occafion to call upon her people for a fupply in the exigency of her own affairs, or in order to fupport the interests and honour of the empire at large. A refpectable and ingenious writer is of opinion that it would have been wifer in Great Britain to have adopted this plan than to have paid off any part of her debt by the finking fund. "But the queftion to which the reader's atten"tion is more particularly called at prefent, is, "if the fum that has been taken from the finking fund, and applied to the difcharge of our "funded incumbrances, had been expended folely in making Great Britain one populous and "cultivated field or garden; whether the nation "could not have borne the whole debt with lefs difficulty than it now can fupport the debt as it has been reduced? Twenty-four millions laid "out in promoting the improvement and culti"vation of the foil, would have rendered every "acre in the kingdom productive of fome valua"ble article.-The whole country would have "exibited one uninterrupted fcene of labour and fertility. No more well founded complaints "would be heard, that the number of the people had decreafed, that the poor wanted en ' *Hiftory of the Public Revenue of the British Empire, by Sir John Sinclair, page 364. couragement |