From Chambers's Journal. HIGHLAND ROADS AND HIGHLAND CANALS. supported by the regular troops; they are unacquainted with the passages by which the mountains are traversed, exposed to frequent 'WHO'LL buy a canal? Who'll make a bid-ambuscades, and shot from the tops of the ding for this splendid work of engineering? hills, which they return without effect." Who'll have it for nothing, and our thanks This information, the result of hard experiinto the bargain?" The Government virtually proclaim this to all the Queen's subjects in reference to the Caledonian Canal, which has been a millstone round the necks of Mr. Gladstone and other finance ministers year after year. Many are not aware that the nation supplies something every year for maintaining certain roads, bridges, and canals in the northern half of our island. It is a matter worth a ence derived in 1715, determined the Government to stir in the matter; they resolved to employ General Wade and his soldiers in making roads in the Highlands. As they were made by military men, and chiefly for military purposes, these new roads became known as military roads. That which was begun by General Wade was continued by other officers, at intervals for more than half a century; until at length the military roads of the Highlands extended from Stirling across the Grampians to Inverness; from Inverness along what is now the margin of the Caledonian Canal, to Fort George, Fort Augustus, and Fort William; and in other parts-until, by 1785, they extended seven hundred and eighty-eight miles, with ten hundred and eleven bridges over the streams. So much of this system of roads as was finished by 1745, greatly aided in suppressing the rebellion of that year. There was an old epigram in vogue at the end of the last century :— made, Wade!" little attending to; for this appropriation of public money to the roads and bridges, if not to the canals, has proved to be a useful exception to a general rule. We are, most of us, arriving gradually at a recognition of the maxim, that in a country like ours, it is well to leave industrial and commercial matters as much as possible to the initiation of private traders and joint-stock companies, and not to intrust them to the government. Roads, railways, and canals come under this category. At the same time, there may be reasons why the state should lend a helping-hand occasionally, when there is not available local" Had you seen these roads before they were capital, and when the public spirit of the time is not up to the necessary level. Such You'd lift up your hands, and bless General was decidedly the case in the northern half of Scotland at the early part of the present The apparent IIibernicism was forgiven on century. Those great civilizers, roads, were account of the usefulness of the roads; for sadly deficient. Before the power of the that which gave a passage to troops at first, Stuarts was broken in 1745, the chiefs of the was also found available for peaceful traders. clans had their fastnesses and strongholds The soldiers, separated into small parties, among the hills, so placed that regular mili- made the roads and built the bridges, receivtary forces could scarcely get access to them; ing a small increase of pay while so employed; and this was one cause for the long continu- they worked under the direction of a masterance of the struggle. This had been found mason and an overseer, both amenable to especially the case in the time of the first military authority. The roads were nearly Pretender, in 1715. General Wade, report-straight, ascending and descending hills at ing to the king on this subject a few years inclines that would astonish modern roadafterwards, eaid: "I presume to observe to makers. A satirical critic of the general's your majesty the great disadvantage which doings said that he "formed the heroic deregular troops are under, when they engage termination of pursuing straight lines, and with those who inhabit mountainous situa- of defying nature and wheel-carriages both, tions. The Highlands in Scotland are almost at one valiant effort of courage and science. impenetrable from the want of roads and Up and down, up and down, as the old catch bridges, and from the excessive rains that says, it is like sailing in the Bay of Biscay. almost continually fall in those parts; No sooner up than down, no sooner down which, by nature and constant use, becomes than up. No sooner has a horse got into habitual to the natives, but very difficultly his pace again than he is called on to stop; no sooner is he out of wind than he must begin to trot or gallop; and then the trap at the bottom that receives the wheels at full speed! from £4,000 to £5,000 per annum : this being the amount of the imperial present made to the Highlands for the maintenance of the excellent roads in the ten northern counties of Aberdeen, Argyle, Banff, Bute, Caithness, Inverness, Moray, Nairn, Ross, and Sutherland. There are nearly a thousand miles of road, and more than a thousand bridges. The counties, as we have said, pay the remainder of the cost. There is a good deal of public spirit shown in some of the counties which were at one time very poor. In Caithness, for instance, almost up as far north as the bleak Orkneys, the heritors, in 1829 and subsequent years, making much-needed roads and bridges; However, those military roads did much good to Scotland-not only of themselves, but also by giving rise to those "Highland Roads and Bridges" which to this day take a little money out of the national exchequer annually. The old military roads, in many places, were kept in occasional repair at the expense of the counties; but early in the present century it was felt that some of them were too steep and too narrow for general traffic, and that others were needed in districts hitherto wholly unprovided. A commission for “ High-raised and spent no less than £40,000 in land Roads and Bridges " was issued, to remedy these defects by degrees. The work was to be paid for in the following way: onefourth of the expense was defrayed out of the national exchequer, and the other threefourths assessed on the proprietors of land in the Highland counties. There was another arrangement afterwards introduced, to the effect that the county gentry and authorities might relieve the commissioners of any further liability, and take the tolls of the roads to repay the cost of maintenance. During no less than fifty-eight consecutive years have these commissioners annually reported what they have been doing, and at what cost. Scotland has most unquestionably benefited by the system. Roads have been opened through districts before unprovided with them; agricultural produce has been brought to market in largely augmented quantities; quarries and mines have been developed; and facilities for personal travelling introduced. Let us not make the mistake of supposing that because railways are gradually superseding many of these roads, the roads them- But how about the poor Caledonian Canal selves were not wanted. The population and are we to pay this also the compliment of traffic which the roads created, rendered rail- saying that it represents a certain sum of ways probable and profitable; and thus the money well laid out? Scarcely. We can roads were the true precursors of the rail- only say that the motive was a good one, and ways. Generally speaking, the annual re- that the constructers believed the canal would ports of the commissioners contain some such confer a lasting benefit on Scotland. There sentence as this: "The commissioners have were many temptations to cut a canal through much satisfaction in reporting, that notwith- that region. In the first place, there is a standing much wet weather in the Highlands, depression running right across Scotland from the roads under their charge have not suf- north-east to south-west, called the "Great fered many casualties. The roads have been Glen," of so remarkable a character, that it maintained throughout in a perfect state of seems like a hint from nature to make a canal repair." The demands on the public purse there. The Glen comprises Beauly Firth, for these purposes in recent years have varied | Loch Ness, Loch Oich, Loch Lochy, Loch En ment. and Loch Linnhe; together with certain riv-nine portions are almost mathematically in a ers which convey the waters of some of these straight line. The lochs themselves were lakes to the German Ocean or North Sea, and naturally very deep, but the short connecting others to the Atlantic. It was a very tempt- canals involved great labor; for they are one ing spot for such an enterprise. All the hundred and twenty feet broad at the surface, maritime trade from the east to the west fifty feet broad at the bottom, and seventeen coast of Scotland had to be carried round by feet deep-large enough to admit ships of the stormy coasts of Pentland and the Heb- considerable size. As the surface of the water brides, consuming many days of time, and at Loch Oich was found to be ninety-four feet subjecting the vessels and crews to imminent above the sea-level, two vast series of locks danger of shipwreck. Towards the end of were required, to ascend to the summit-level the period when the military roads were un- from the one end, and to descend to the other. der construction, the Government reasoned in These locks, no less than twenty-eight in some such way as this: "These lochs and de- number, are very large engineering construcpressions in the Great Glen will facilitate the tions, each being about one hundred and cutting of a canal from sea to sea; the High- seventy-five feet long, forty wide, and has a land counties are too poor to do it; but if we water-lift of eight feet. Eight of them are do it, the tolls on the ships passing through quite close together, and form a series known. the canal-either in going from sea to sea, or as "Neptune's Staircase." Many powerful in the development of local traffic-may prob-mountain-streams are carried wholly under ably pay interest on the capital spent in the canal, by well-constructed culverts. making the canal, besides maintaining the Such is the Caledonian Canal. It has been annual repairs, and may even possibly pay off a most unfortunate speculation, in a commerin time the capital itself." James Watt sur-cial point of view. Just sixty years ago, it veyed the Glen for the Government, and many was begun, and in those sixty years Parliaother engineers were struck with the feasibility of the undertaking; but it was not until 1803 that the canal was actually commenced under Mr. Telford; and no less than twenty years elapsed before a ship went through it from end to end. ment has spent nearly £1,300,000 upon it, besides the £100,000 which have been received in tolls. So far from paying the cost, it does not pay the interest on the cost; so far from paying the interest, it does not even pay the annual working-expenses. The state It is very easy to be wise after the event, would now actually be the richer if some one and to say that the Government ought not to would take the whole canal and its works as have done this. If the Government could a present. The shippers and captains of veshave foreseen that nearly a million and a half sels have never made much use of it. Various sterling of public money would thus have modes of explaining the fact have been been licked up, and that after all the Scotch adopted; but a fact it certainly is. There shippers would care very little about the are no towns of any note on the mid-route; canal, of course they would not have made insomuch that almost the only traffic to be it; but ministers and parliaments must buy expected is through-traffic from sea to sea. wisdom like other folks. A great work it Now, taking one day with another, during certainly is, in an engineering point of view. the last few years, there have only been four Beginning at the Beauly Firth, near Inver- vessels a day passing through or even into the ness, the Caledonian Canal is cut through canal; and the tolls which shippers are willseven miles of solid rock to Loch Ness, which ing to pay on these four vessels are not suffiis itself twenty-four miles long; then six miles cient even to defray the ordinary repairs and of canal leads to Loch Oich, which is three and expenses. When, as in the winter of 1848a quarter miles long; then two miles to Loch 49, great floods injure the canal, and call for Lochy, which is ten miles long; then eight an additional expenditure of many thousand miles of canal to Loch Eil, which opens out pounds, the balance of the account is, of into the western sea. There are thus four course, still more unfavorable. The House of canals, twenty-three miles in length alto- Commons often gets restive on this matter. gether, connecting five firths and lochs, hav- A committee seriously recommended the transing a length of about thirty-seven miles-or fer of the canal to some other authority, if sixty miles from sea to sea. And all these any one would take it; but nobody will, for nobody can see the way to make it "pay." | verts, drains, soughs, tunnels, arches, piers, Every year the commissioners have to come to the nation's strong-box, because the tolls do not recoup the working expenses; the loss, it is true, is not much, but still there is a loss. In order to expedite the traffic, steam-tugs have been introduced; but the poor canal does not afford a return for even this modern improvement. Powerful steamers are now establishing a trade on the seaboard, and railways are gradually entering the Highlands; so that the canal is beset by two formidable opponents not contemplated when it was first planned. And yet, with all this, it will not do actually to abandon the canal, seeing that any neglect might lead to overflowing that would devastate neighboring lands; insomuch that we are somewhat in the predicament of the Irish soldier who told his officer that he had "caught a Tartar." bridges, banks, fences, ways, roads, towingpaths, landing-places, docks, quays, wharfs, houses, warehouses, toolhouses, buildings, cranes, weighing-machines, works and appliances. "The canal fell into trouble in 1859, and the public purse had to get it out of trouble again. A sad accident befell it. The canal is fed by three great embanked reservoirs, which collect the rains and springs from a large area of mountain district. The uppermost of these, Loch Camlock, covering forty acres, and eight hundred feet above the sea-level, burst its boundaries on the 2d of February in that year, after a long series of heavy rains. Down rushed the water, burst in the banks of the second reservoir, rushed on again, and did the same to the third or lowest. "The contents of all these," said the resident engineer, "were discharged in common down the narThe 58th Report of the Commissioners, just row valley or rocky ravine along which the made public (July 1863), tells us that the summit-level of the canal was fed. In the canal had a slight increase of good-fortune in course of their violent descent an immense the year 1862-63; inasmuch as the receipts mass of stone and earth, with some brushexceeded the working expenses by a small wood, was dislodged from the precipitous sum. About 1836 passages of vessels were slopes on either side, and carried down by the made through, or partially through, the water, so as to occasion their deposit on the canal, giving an average of five per day; these summit-level of the canal. Not only was the vessels paid £7,000 in tolls, which was a few channel of the canal filled right across for a hundred pounds more than the commissioners considerable space in length, but the accumupaid for repairs and wages-leaving the com-lated mass at the principal point rose much missioners' own remuneration and expenses, and the interest on the cost, to be borne as usual by the nation. There is another Highland canal, too, the Crinan, that belongs to the nation. This canal is very short, but it cuts off an immense distance in sailing or steaming from Glasgow to Oban and Port William: seeing that it goes across the isthmus that connects the elongated peninsula of Cantire or Kintyre with the mainland. It is only nine miles in length, beginning at Loch Gilp, and ending at Loch Crinan. It is on a very much smaller scale than the Caledonian Canal, being twenty-four feet wide, and twelve deep, and having fifteen locks. The canal has been in existence half a century and more. In 1848, it was placed under the same commissioners as the Caledonian, with (to use the big words of the act of Parliament)" all its harbors, basins, reservoirs, aqueducts, feeders, water-tanks, fens, dams, embankments, weirs, locks, sluices, cul above it." What was to be done? The com- The 58th Report of the Commissioners, above adverted to, shows that in the year 1862-63 the Crinan Canal spent £3,277 in earning £3,780-thus just keeping itself out of difficulties. About 2,260 passages were made by steamers and sailing vessels through the canal. From The Spectator, 26 Sept. MR. FORSTER ON THE MEANING OF THE 66 AMERICAN WAR. have repeatedly fought to repress the propagandist democracy known as the "Revolution," and what are all these causes, even in their direct political bearing, compared with MR. FORSTER'S speech at Leeds is one of the that of freedom when openly pitted against ablest, and will be one of the most effective the "sacred right" of slavery? It is nonyet uttered upon the American war. It is sense to talk of slavery as if it affected only an effort, and a successful one, to justify the slaves. It effects also freemen, and means conviction entertained by enthusiasts by the for them either perpetual political submission arguments which appeal to statesmen who are to a caste, or the perpetual fear of attacks without enthusiasm. No Northerner could directed with subtle skill, and supported with desire to see his cause more loftily described dauntless courage against the foundations of than as "the struggle whether upon the free society. Who in England blames Cavcontinent of America the principle of slavery aignac for declaring open war on men who or the principle of freedom shall predomi- marched on the Tuileries to overturn existing nate; no statesman will question that this, social order. Yet no dream which French in the most restricted as well as the broadest workmen ever entertained, no theory Proudsense, is a definite practical end. Anti- hon ever elaborated, would be so fatal to slavery feeling may be, as it is the fashion to modern society as its surrender to men who say, a vague fanaticism," though it be one declare its first principle-cynics say its only which for eight hundred years has in one one-utterly false and bad. If Europe has form or another inspired all English effort; a right to intervene for Poland-and it is but the predominance of freedom over a only the expediency of intervention which is continent" is as definite a cause as that of ever questioned-that right is based on the "order," or "constitutional government," broader right of resisting acts fatal to civilior "religious liberty," or any one of the zation, and that, and infinitely more, is the hundred cries" for which Englishmen have justification of the North. Apart altogether spent their lives, far more definite than that from humanity, aside altogether from the inbalance of power" for which we are al-ternal dispute, beyond the right of self-presways fighting, or that "theory of nationali-ervation inherent in every organism, there ties" for which everybody seems always ready stands the grand political question whether to fight. And that this is the cause for which, upon the continent of America the principle consciously or unconsciously, Northerners of freedom or the principle of slavery shall fight, their bitterest opponents do not affect predominate." Has a great war since the to deny. The North may be honest or dis- world began ever had greater issue? Of honest in the matter of abolition, may be course there is one argument to which all willing to admit blacks to citizenship as this is no answer. There are honest but Massachusetts has done, or to reinslave free- narrow men who hold that our supreme prinmen as Ohio could, perhaps, be induced to ciple is obedience to the commands of Christ, do, without affecting this issue one jot. If and that Christ commanded submission to the South wins the game, as it originally in- every evil strong enough to assert its strength tended to win it,-realizes, that is, the dream in arms, and their faith may have its reward. which in its evil magnitude imparts to Mr. But then their principle is the very one which Davis's broad intellect something of the en- those who denounce the North in the same thusiast's depth, slavery will be the predom-breath deny, for they warmly praise the inant power upon the North American conti- South for resisting in arms the chain which, nent. If the North wins the game, whether as they say, pressed on the Southern States. her stake be empire, or a boundary settled by herself, or only a treaty of which she arranges the terms, slavery will not be so predominant. No possible ingenuity of argument can evade that issue, and if that issue be not a practical one, what do politics mean, what is the sense or object of this conflict between the despotic, aristocratic, and democratic principles on which the world, from the day when the Thirty were expelled Athens, has wasted so much of its vital force? We fought through a civil war rather than submit permanently to the despotic principle; France desolated half her provinces, covered her cities with blood, and broke forever with the past to be rid of the aristocratic one, both To rid Englishmen of this fallacy, that the Northern war is causeless, is half to open their eyes, and in this work Mr. Forster's speech will be a most powerful aid. His view once admitted, and it is urged with a logical brevity laughably at variance with the popular view of the member for Bradford's enthusiasm, there will be no further danger of any misdirection of the national strength, or any serious error in the direction of the national sympathies. The governing class may still acknowledge, as we do, that brain and vigor and coherent organization are all on the Southern side; may still regret, as we do, the idolatry of an unworkable constitution; may still resent, as we do, the ready resort to menace |