PROPOSED SHIP CANAL ACROSS IRELAND.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 541, 6 July 1869, Page 4

PROPOSED SHIP CANAL ACROSS IRELAND.

(From the Weekly Dispatch.) A ship canal through Ireland! Communication with America facilitated ; Ireland enriched and pacified ; and England's reputation for engineering brought np again to something like what it was in days of yore, ere the Suez Oanal and the Pacific Railway dwarfed our railway achievements into nothingness ! Our notes of admiration are genuine ; there is no sneer lupking behind them-^but only a faint notp of interrogatipn. Will it pay ? we are constrained to ask; — because, though it linked England and America in bonds of friendship for ever ; though it made England and Ireland one in prosperity and one in soul ; though it raised our prestige to the highest pitch among nations, and postponed " foreign competition " for half a century ; though it did all this and much more, and paid no dividend, it wpuld be, as we all know, but as the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. Of course, in this country, the patriotism, wisdom, and forsight of capitalists are certain to provide everything necessary to the well-being of the State, and we are not guilty of the. heresy of sugg< ing that anything should be done which doesn't visibly pay. If it were right to nurse the sick pool", for instance, or help emigration on a large scale., of course there would be a company fop it ; but the fact that poor people's blessings are not marketable or visibly profitable deters all right-minded capitalists (except in quite a private capacity) from having anything to do with schemes, either by themselves or their government. We are as far from wishing to suggest that the proposed canal, of which very few details have yet been published, would fail commercially, as we are from expecting ifc to regenerate the world ; but we have very little doubt that it would to a great extent regenerate Ireland. Its advantage to the Atlantic trade of Liverpool taken as a whole, would be incalculable, though the saving to each vessel would scarcely be jjreat enough to justify a high rate of charge. Yet low rates would probably bring quick returns, and perhaps fair profits, for under proper management every vessel to or from the States ought to use the canal. The detour round the south of Ireland may not be considerable on a voyage of two thousand miles ; but in these days of large and costly steamers the saving of even one day's fuel and wages is a matter of importance. To sailing ships, on the other hand, it is most important to get clear of the narrow waters of St. George's Channel as soon as possible. Contrary winds, which are of less moment in the broad Atlantic, may dutarn vessels a long time in the Channel, and the rocky Welsh and Irish coasts are every year fatal to a great number. The question is really one of levels. A canal already reaches from Dublin to Ballinasloe, threefourths of the way to Galway on the western side, but this, no doubt, is obstructed by locks, like most barge canals, for the country, though almost a plain, does, of course, undulate to some extent. The existing canal is known to have been very costly, but this was owing solely to the boggy nature of the ground. This difficulty would not be proportionately great in a large canal, for reasons which need not here be entered upon. The only question is, Are the undulations slight enough for a great canal to cut right through them without the assistance ol locks ? The answer, we expect, would be in the affirmative, biit we are convinced that the canal would never be of the slightest use unless so constructed, and unless made wide and deep enough to admit of the largest steamers passing through at considerable speed and at all times of the tide. Sailing vessels, of course, would be towed through. The work has no chance of success unless carried out on a grand scale, in which case we believe it mi^ht be profitable to its individual proprietors, and assuredly a blessing on the nation at large. At this present time the two greatest works the world has ever seen are approaching completion, one in the Old World, the other in the New, and England has neither part nor lot in either of them. One, which will, perhaps, benefit us more than any other, has been carried out in the teeth of our short-sighted opposition and ignorant scoffing; the other, destined to increase many fold the resources of our greatest rival and most dangerous neighbor, has been hastened to completion almost without our knowing of it 3 existence, and certainly without our raising a finger to neutralise its effects by planning a similar work in our own adjoining territory. The foreign works in question are the Suez Caual and the Central Pacific Railway, now almost linking together the Atlantic and Pacific, New York and San Francisco. We abused and ridiculed the impracticable French canal, which the sands of the desert were to fill up, until we saw it was time to make our shipping arrangements for using it. Having bridged the St. Lawrence some years ago by a bridge, two miles long, we have busied ourselves with talking of it ever since, while, in the meantime, the Americans have bridged the continent with an iron road laid down at the rate of two miles a day ! And this for Britannia, the mother of steam engines ! O shades of Telford, Scephenson and Watt. ! have we not even a Brunei left among i>s, to make us feel we can produce a great plan still ? Yet the Irish ship canal — we know not who has proposed it — would be a work to rank with any we have named, and might produce political consequences as momentous. Port Said, we are told, is to rival Alexandria, when the Suez Caual is open, and no doubt Galway would become as important a place if the Irish canal were made. It is not easy to see why a ip ere transit trade should always enrich a country as it does ; but there is no doubt of the fact. Galway could never rival Liverpool, but it would become a kind of distant suburb of the latter, to the enormous advantage of both ; and an immense per centage of the wealth passing through Ireland would stick to the banks of the canal, so to say, without anyone being the poorer for it. The subject is fascinating, and is, perhaps, productive of more Irish enthusiasm than befits the Saxon nature ; but we cannot help saying that should the scheme stand the professional criticisms of engineers (who were all wrong, however, about the Suez Canal), there is none which Government might more consistently lend its aid to, or, for that matter, to which the revenues of the Irish Church might be more fitly laid under contribution. We have no intention of opening the question of public works, and the extent to which the public as a nation should undertake ;

them, although we do not mind stating our Relief that the nation is, for many purposes, the ultimate joint-stock company- -the only company large enough to undertake many of the contracts we are anxious to "let." Irrigation works in India have paid the Government handsome interests in the shape of increased land-tax, and there are numberless works required at home which would pay the nation well, indirectly, though they might fail to remunerate shareholders, Without desiring to point any particular moral bearing upon the Irish canal scheme, wr think it well to let our readers know from time to time what other countries are doing in the engineering way, that it may be known throughout the land that the want of united national efforts, and a certain national tendency to "moneygrubbing " and contempt for great ideas, are daily removing us further from our once admitted leadership in the great battle with Nature,