THE SUEZ CANAL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 106, 6 May 1871, Page 4

THE SUEZ CANAL.

(Economist.) The Suez Canal has now been a. twelvemonth working, and it is officially stated that the receipts average about £240,000 a year. The head quarters being in Paris, tbe war and Beige have, prevented the usual official report being made, which should have given information regarding the net, as well as the gross revenue ; but the statement as to the gross traffic affords some material for a retrospective glance at the anticipations of traffic and profit which were indulged in a' twelvemonth since, and which we showed to bo exaggerated. The promoters of the enterprise, it will be remembered, did not shrink from calculating on a traffic of two or three million tous of shipping per annum, and this immediately ; and no doubt if the canal had such a traffic it would pay very well. But we pointed out that the data of the calculation were imaginary ; that the annual tonnage of the existing carrying trade which the caual would serve is at the outset about 3,000,000 tons — this being a certain figure ; and that, as the trade would not change all at once, and the canal offered, no^ advantages to give a great and sudden stimulus to new trade, it was unreasonable to look forward to the traffic so confidently reckoned on very soon. The canal would do very well, we said, if at first oue or two million tons of shipping annually' made use of it. The statistics now published show that the average traffic has not yet reached the figure of 1,000,000 tons — receipts of £240,000 per annum, at ten francs per ton, only implying a trade of about 600,00p tons per annum. In point of fact, now that we have experience to guide us, the canal has had unexpected luck in obtaining even this traffic. The screw steamers which use it almost exclusively are of a kind which did not exist a few years ago ; and it is certain the promoters could not have foreseen that wheu the canal was inaugurated, not only would such steamers be in existence, but a number of them laid up, or about to be laid up for want of business, would be suddenly available for a new venture. But for the remarkable progress of mechanical inveution since the canal was commenced, it must have been a stupendous failure ; and but for the singular coudition of the shipping trade at the time of its inauguration, its start, though far short of the promoters' anticipations, could not have been so good as it is. The practical question now is, how the canal is to be kept open ; and the gross return will, perhaps, be sufficiently good for this purpose, though we do not know yet what the working expenses have been. It will be ludicrously insufficient even to pay the debenture-holders, whose annual claim is double the amount of the gross receipts ; but if there is only a surplus of any sort to be dealt with, there will be some possibility of a new organisation of the company, or the purchase of its undertaking by the Egyptian Government.