THE SUEZ CANAL.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 109, 5 November 1858, Page 4

THE SUEZ CANAL.

As a rule, canals do not pay. Take our own Caledonian Canal, perfected at such great cost, and kept up at such enormous sacrifices. It was to monopolise all the trade between Denmark and the Baltic ports, and, looking at the map, this expectation appeared a certainty. It accomodates only a few holiday steamers and an occasional fishing smack, and it is only kept in working repair because we are ashamed to abandon so great a work. The promoters of the Suez Canal scheme say their works could be accomplished for eight millions. Competent and impartial engineers are of opinion that the plans as proposed would cost twenty millions to execute, and when executed would be practically useless. The proposed port in the Mediterranean must be made in that oozy and shifting bottom to which the Nile is every year bringing down its new deposits of mud and sand. To keep it from filling up would be alone a greater expense than any probable return of dues would cover, while the enormous ever-acting steam power, necessary to keep the great stagnant trench supplied with water would be worked at a cost which those who know the price of coals at Suez can perhaps appreciate. The advantages of a ship canal must be very great to cover working expenses such as these—we are supposing for a moment that the money could be raised and the works could .be completed; but what are the advantages? The projectors cannot expect that the passengers would prefer a tedious course along this ditch to a rapid railroad transit across the Desert. The passage must be limited to vessels which in these days must be considered of small draught and tonnage, and if there be any truth in the new doctrine and the speed of a steamer may be made to hold proportion to her length, the ship canal would soon be found practicable only to a class of ships the usefulness of which has departed. At the best it could never be used except for heavy goods, and time is not of such enormous importance in their case as to induce the merchant to increase his payments very greatly for freight and insurance. Eight millions of money will never be raised to commence a work which can never become commercially remunerative; twenty millions of money will never be raised to complete it: annual subsides will never be forthcoming to keep it up. Even the promoters must know this, although it may well suit individual interests to keep a speculation on foot by intrigues in Egypt and by pompous promises in Europe. Turkey, therefore, does wisely in not allowing a company of adventurers to acquire rights in Egypt on the faith of a project that can never be effected; and England has done right in setting the facts in their proper light^before the Ministers of the Sultan, and discountenancing a bubble company which can never do anything more substantial in the matter of the transit to the East than tor introduce confusion into existing arrangements, and present an impassable impediment to future improvements. — Observer.