Chapter DXXX: Section 63: of this latter act reads: 'For all purposes (9)

The second great stage in the development of canal transport
is of comparatively recent origin. It may, in fact, be said to
date only from the time when the construction of a canal
across the Isthmus of Suez was proved to be not only
practicable as an engineering project, but likewise highly
successful as a commercial enterprise. Not that this was by
any means the first canal of its kind. On the contrary, … the
ancients had many schemes of a similar kind in view across the
same isthmus. The canal of Languedoc, constructed in the reign
of Louis XIV., was for that day as considerable an
undertaking. It was designed for the purpose of affording a
safe and speedy means of communication between the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean; it has a total length of
148 miles, is in its highest part 600 ft. above the level of
the sea, and has in all 114 locks and sluices. In Russia,
canals had been constructed in the time of Peter the Great,
for the purpose of affording a means of communication between
the different inland seas that are characteristic of that
country. The junction of the North and Caspian Seas, of the
Baltic and the Caspian, and the union of the Black and the
Caspian Seas, had all been assisted by the construction of a
series of canals which were perhaps without parallel for their
completeness a century ago. In Prussia a vast system of inland
navigation had been completed during the last century, whereby
Hamburg was connected with Dantzic, and the products of the
country could be exported either by the Black Sea or by the
Baltic. In Scotland the Forth and Clyde Canal, and the
Caledonian Canal, were notable examples of artificial
navigation designed to connect two seas, or two firths that
had all the characteristics of independent oceans; and the
Erie Canal, in the United States, completed a chain of
communication between inland seas of much the same order. But,
although a great deal had been done in the direction of
facilitating navigation between different waters by getting
rid of the 'hyphen' by which they were separated anterior to
the date of the Suez Canal, this grand enterprise undoubtedly
marked a notable advance in the progress of the world from
this point of view. The work was at once more original and
more gigantic than any that had preceded it. … The Suez Canal
once completed and successful, other ship canal schemes came
'thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.' Several of these
were eminently practical, as well as practicable. The Hellenic
Parliament determined on cutting through the tongue of land
which is situated between the Gulfs of Athens and Lepantus,
known as the Isthmus of Corinth. This isthmus divides the
Adriatic and the Archipelago, and compels all vessels passing
from the one sea to the other to round Cape Matapan, thus
materially lengthening the voyages of vessels bound from the
western parts of Europe to the Levant, Asia Minor and Smyrna.
The canal is now an accomplished fact. Another proposal was
that of cutting a canal from Bordeaux to Marseilles, across
the South of France, a distance of some 120 miles, whereby
these two great ports would be brought 1,678 miles nearer to
each other, and a further reduction, estimated at 800 miles,
effected in the distance between England and India. The Panama
Canal (projected in 1871, and actually commenced in 1880) is,
however, the greatest enterprise of all, and in many respects
the most gigantic and difficult undertaking of which there is
any record. The proposed national canal from sea to sea,
proposed by Mr. Samuel Lloyd and others for Great Britain, the
proposed Sheffield Ship Canal, the proposed Irish Sea and
Birkenhead Ship Canal, and the proposed ship canal to connect
the Forth and the Clyde, are but a few of many notable
examples of the restlessness of our times in this direction. …
There are not a few people who regard the canal system almost
as they might regard the Dodo and the Megatherium. It is to
them an effete relic of a time when civilisation was as yet
but imperfectly developed. … Canals do, indeed, belong to the
past. … That canals also belong to the present, Egypt, the
American isthmus, Manchester, Corinth, and other places, fully
prove, and, unless we greatly err, they are no less the
heritage of the future."

_J. S. Jeans,
Waterways and Water Transport,
section 1, chapter 1._

"'The sea girt British Isles have upwards of 2,500 miles of
canals, in addition to the Manchester Ship Canal, which is
thirty-five and one-half miles, and is said to be one of the
most remarkable undertakings of modern times.' … In 1878,
Germany had in operation 1,289 miles of canals, and had
ordered the construction of 1,045 miles of new canals. Belgium
has forty-five canals. Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Holland and
Russia have their respective systems of canals. France has
expended a larger amount of money than any other European
nation, to provide for canal navigation, and in 1887 the total
length of its canals was 2,998 miles. About forty-eight per
cent of the tonnage of that Republic was transported on its
waterways. The average capacity of boats used therefor was 300
tons. The total length of the canals in operation in the
United States in 1890 was upwards of 2,926 miles."

_H. W. Hill,
Speech on Canals in New York
Constitutional Convention of 1894._

"In most of the leading countries of the world, a time arrived
when the canal system and the railway system came into strong
competition, and when it seemed doubtful on which side the
victory would lie. This contest was necessarily more marked in
England than in any other country. England had not, indeed,
been the first in the field with canals, as she had been with
railways. … But England having once started on a career of
canal development, followed it up with greater energy and on a
more comprehensive scale than any other country. For more than
half a century canals had had it all their own way. … But the
railway system, first put forward as a tentative experiment,
and without the slightest knowledge on the part of its
promoters of the results that were before long to be realised,
was making encroachments, and proving its capabilities. This
was a slow process, as the way had to be felt. The first
railway Acts did not contemplate the use of locomotives, nor
the transport of passenger traffic. The Stockton and
Darlington Railway, constructed in 1825, was the first on
which locomotives were employed.

See Steam Locomotion (page 3029).

Even at this date, there were many who doubted the expediency
of having a railroad instead of a canal, and in the county of
Durham … there was a fierce fight, carried on for more than
twenty years. In the United States, the supremacy of waterways
was maintained until a much later date. …
{3726}
A keen and embittered struggle was kept up between the canal
and the railroad companies until 1857; and even in the latter
year the Legislature of the State of New York, finding that
railway competition was making serious inroads upon their
canal traffic, were considering whether they should not either
entirely prohibit the railways from carrying freight, or
impose such tolls upon railway tonnage as would cripple the
companies in their competition with canals. … The agitation,
however, came to nothing. It had no solid bottom. It was an
agitation similar in kind to that which had disturbed Europe
when Arkwright's spinning machine and Compton's mule were
taking the place of hand labour. The clamour suddenly
collapsed, and was never heard of afterwards. Meanwhile the
railway system proceeded apace. The records of human progress
contain no more remarkable chapter than that which tells of
the growth of American railroads. … In the annals of
transportation, there is no more interesting chapter than that
which deals with the contest that has been carried on for
nearly half a century between the railways and the lakes and
canals for the grain traffic between Chicago and New York.
This contest is interesting, not only to Americans, as the
people who are engaged in it, and whom it more directly
concerns; but also to the people of Europe, and of Great
Britain in particular, the cost of whose food supplies is
affected thereby. … The circumstances of the Erie Canal are,
however, exceptional. Seldom, indeed, do railway freights run
so low as they do on the 950 miles of rail way that separate
Chicago from New York. Over this distance, the great trunk
lines have recently been carrying freight at the rate of 15
cents, or 7½ d. per 100 lbs. This is equivalent to about 14 s.
per ton, or exactly 0.174 d. per ton per mile. There is
probably no such low rates for railway transport in the world.
But this low rate is due entirely to the competition of the
lakes, rivers, and canals."

_J. S. Jeans,
Waterways and Water Transport,
chapters 26-27._

"The early railroad engineers overestimated the speed which
could be readily attained. Fifty years ago it was generally
expected that passenger trains would soon run at rates of from
seventy-five to one hundred miles an hour—a prediction which
has as yet remained unfulfilled. On the other hand, they
underestimated the railroad's capacity for doing work cheaply.
It was not supposed that railroads would ever be able to
compete with water-routes in the carriage of freight, except
where speedy delivery was of the first importance. Nor was it
at that time desired that they should do so. The first English
railroad charter contained provisions expressly intended to
prevent such competition. A generation later, in the State of
New York itself, there was a loud popular cry that the New
York Central must be prohibited from carrying freight in
competition with the Erie Canal. The main field of usefulness
of railroads, and the means by which that field was to be
developed, were not merely ignored, they were positively
shunned. This period of railroad infancy ended about the year
1850. The crisis of 1847 marked its close in England. The
Revolution of 1848-51 was the dividing line on the continent
of Europe. The land grants of 1850, and the formation of three
trunk lines from the seaboard to the interior may be taken as
the beginning of the new era in the United States. It began to
be seen and felt that a steam railroad was something more than
an exaggerated turnpike or horse railroad, and that it had
functions and laws of its own. The changes were: first, the
consolidation of old roads; second, the construction of new
ones in a great variety of conditions; third, and most
important, the development of traffic by cheap rates and new
methods. … Under all these influences the railroad mileage of
the world increased from 20,000 in 1850 to 66,000 in 1860,
137,000 in 1870, 225,000 in 1880, and [406,416 in
1893.—'Archiv für Eisenbahnwesen']. … Rapid as has been the
growth of the railroad mileage, traffic has kept pace with it.
It is estimated that the total number of tons moved in 1875
was about 800,000,000. At present [1885] it is about
1,200,000,000 annually, while the passenger movement has
increased from 1,400,000,000 to 2,400,000,000. If we could
take distance as well as quantity into account, the change
(for freight at any rate) would be still greater. To a certain
extent this increased intensity of use of railroads is due to
improvements in engineering; to a much greater extent it is
the result of improved business methods. … Between 1850 and
1880 rates were reduced on an average to about one half their
former figures, in spite of the advance in price of labor and
of many articles of consumption. A variety of means were made
to contribute to this result. The inventions of Bessemer and
others, by which it became possible to substitute steel rails
for iron, made it profitable for the railroads to carry larger
loads at a reduction in rates. Improvements in management
increased the effective use of the rolling stock, while the
consumption of fuel and the cost of handling were diminished.
By other changes in railroad economy it became possible to
compete for business of every kind, with the best canals or
with natural water-courses. The railroad rates of to-day are
but a small fraction of the canal charges of two generations
ago; while in volume of business, speed, and variety of use
there is an inestimable advance."

_A. T. Hadley,
Railroad Transportation,
chapter 1._

"The railway mileage in the United States on June 30, 1893,
was 176,461.07 miles. This shows an increase during the year
of 4,897.55 miles, being an increase of 2.80 per cent. The
previous report showed an increase during the year ending June
30, 1892, of 3,160.78, being an increase of 1.88 per cent over
the mileage of the year 1891. The rate of increase from 1886
to 1887 was 9.08 per cent; from 1887 to 1888, 6.05 per cent;
from 1888 to 1889, 3.22 per cent; from 18139 to 1890, 4.78 per
cent; and from 1890 to 1891, 2.94 per cent. … The total number
[of men] in the service of railways in the United States on
June 30, 1893, was 873,602, being an increase of 52,187 over
the number employed the previous year."

_Interstate Commerce Commission,
Statistics of Railways, 1883
pages 11 and 31_.

----------COMMERCE: End--------

COMMON LAW, History of.

See LAW (page 1956).

COMMUNISM.

See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS (page 2932).

COMPURGATION, Disappearance of.

See LAW, CRIMINAL: A. D. 1166 (page 1981).

CONGO STATE, The.

See (in this Supplement) AFRICA.

{3727}

CONNECTICUT, Early provision for education in.

See EDUCATION, MODERN (page 729).

CONNECTICUT BLUE LAWS.

See (in this Supplement) BLUE LAWS.

CONSTANTINOPLE: LIBRARIES.

See LIBRARIES, ANCIENT (page 2006).

Mediæval Commerce.

See (in this Supplement) COMMERCE, MEDIÆVAL.

----------CONSTITUTION OF BELGIUM: Start--------

On page 2304 of this work, under NETHERLANDS (BELGIUM): A. D.
1892-1893, there is given some account of the revision of the
constitution of the kingdom, in 1893, and the peculiar new
features introduced in its provisions, relative to the
elective franchise. The following is a translation of the text
of the revised constitution:

Title I.
Of the Territory and of its Divisions.

Article 1.
Belgium is divided into provinces, these provinces are:
Antwerp, Brabant, Western Flanders, Eastern Flanders, Hainaut,
Liège, Limburg, Luxemburg, Namur. It is the prerogative of
law, if there is any reason, to divide the territory into a
larger number of provinces. Colonies, possessions beyond the
seas or protectorates which Belgium may acquire, are governed
by particular laws. The Belgian forces appointed for their
defense can only be recruited by voluntary enlistment.

Article 2.
The subdivisions of the provinces can be established only by
law.

Article 3.
The boundaries of the State, of the provinces and of the
communes can be changed or rectified only by a law.

Title II.
Of the Belgians and their Rights.

Article 4.
The title Belgian is acquired, preserved and lost according to
the regulations determined by civil law. The present
Constitution, and other laws relating to political rights,
determine what are, in addition to such title, the conditions
necessary for the exercise of these rights.

Article 5.
Naturalization is granted by the legislative power. The great
naturalization, alone, assimilates the foreigner to the
Belgian for the exercise of political rights.

Article 6.
There is no distinction of orders in the State. Belgians are
equal before the law; they alone are admissible to civil and
military offices, with such exceptions as may be established
by law in particular cases.

Article 7.
Individual liberty is guaranteed. No person can be prosecuted
except in the cases provided for by law and in the form which
the law prescribes. Except in the case of flagrant
misdemeanor, no person can be arrested without the order of a
judge, which must be served at the time of the arrest, or, at
the latest, within twenty-four hours.

Article 8.
No person can be deprived, against his will, of the judge
assigned to him by law.

Article 9.
No punishment can be established or applied except by
provision of law.

Article 10.
The domicile is inviolable; no domiciliary visit can be made
otherwise than in the cases provided for by law and in the
form which it prescribes.

Article 11.
No person can be deprived of his property except for public
use, in the cases and in the manner established by law, and
with prior indemnity.

Article 12.
The penalty of confiscation of goods cannot be imposed.

Article 13.
Civil death is abolished; it cannot be revived.

Article 14.
Religious liberty, public worship, and freedom of expressed
opinion in all matters are guaranteed, with a reserve for the
repression of offenses committed in the exercise of these
liberties.

Article 15.
No person can be compelled to join, in any manner whatsoever,
in the acts and ceremonies of any worship, nor to observe its
days of rest.

Article 16.
The State has no right to interfere in the appointment nor in
the installation of the ministers of any religion, nor to
forbid them to correspond with their superiors and to publish
their acts under the ordinary responsibility of publication.
Civil marriage shall always precede the nuptial benediction,
with the exceptions to be prescribed by law in case of need.

Article 17.
Teaching is free; all preventive measures are forbidden; the
repression of offenses is regulated only by law. Public
instruction given at the expense of the State is also
regulated by law.

Article 18.
The press is free; censorship can never be re-established;
caution-money from writers, editors or printers cannot be
required. When the author is known and is a resident of
Belgium, the editor, the printer or the distributor cannot be
prosecuted.

Article 19.
Belgians have the right to meet peaceably and without arms, in
conformity with such laws as may regulate the use of their
right but without the requirement of a previous authorization.
This stipulation does not apply to open air meetings, which
remain entirely subject to police regulations.

Article 20.
Belgians have the right of association; this right cannot be
subject to any preventive measure.

Article 21.
It is the right of every person to address to the public
authorities petitions signed by one or several. The
constituted authorities alone have the right to address
petitions in a collective name.

Article 22.
The secrecy of correspondence is inviolable. The law
determines who are the agents responsible for violation of the
secrecy of letters confided to the post.

Article 23.
The use of the languages spoken in Belgium is optional; it can
be prescribed only by law, and only for acts of public
authority and for judicial transactions.

Article 24.
No previous authorization is necessary for the undertaking of
proceedings against public officials, on account of acts in
their administration, except that which is enacted concerning
ministers.

Title III. Of Powers.

Article 25.
All powers are derived from the nation. They are exercised in
the manner prescribed by the Constitution.

{3728}

Article 26.
Legislative power is exercised collectively by the King, the
Chamber of Representatives and the Senate.

Article 27.
The initiative belongs to each one of the three branches of
the legislative power. Nevertheless, all laws relating to the
revenue or to the expenditures of the State, or to the
contingent of the army must be voted first by the Chamber of
Representatives.

Article 28.
The interpretation of laws by authority belongs only to the
legislative power.

Article 29.
The executive power, as regulated by the Constitution, belongs
to the King.

Article 30.
The judicial power is exercised by the courts and tribunals.
Decrees and judgments are executed in the name of the King.

Article 31.
Interests exclusively communal or provincial, are regulated by
the communal or provincial councils, according to the
principles established by the Constitution.

Chapter First.—Of The Chambers.

Article 32.
Members of both Chambers represent the nation, and not merely
the province or the subdivision of province which has elected
them.

Article 33.
The sittings of the Chambers are public. Nevertheless, each
Chamber forms itself into a secret committee on the demand of
its president or of ten members. It then decides by absolute
majority whether the sitting on the same subject shall be
resumed publicly.

Article 34.
Each Chamber verifies the powers of its members and decides
all contests on the subject that may arise.

Article 35.
No person can be at the same time a member of both Chambers.

Article 36.
A member of one of the two Chambers who is appointed by the
government to any salaried office, except that of minister,
and who accepts the same, ceases immediately to sit, and
resumes his functions only by virtue of a new election.

Article 37.
At every session, each Chamber elects its president and its
vice-presidents and forms its bureau.

Article 38.
Every resolution is adopted by the absolute majority of the
votes, excepting as may be directed by the rules of the
Chambers in regard to elections and presentations. In case of
an equal division of votes, the proposition brought under
deliberation is rejected. Neither of the two Chambers can
adopt a resolution unless the majority of its members is
present.

Article 39.
Votes are given by the voice or by sitting and rising; on
"l'ensemble des lois" the vote is always taken by the call of
the roll of names. Elections and presentations of candidates
are made by ballot.

Article 40.
Each Chamber has the right of inquiry [or investigation].

Article 41.
A bill can be passed by one of the Chambers only after having
been voted article by article.

Article 42.
The Chambers have the right to amend and to divide the
articles and the amendments proposed.

Article 43.
The presenting of petitions in person to the Chambers is
forbidden. Each Chamber has the right to refer to ministers
the petitions that are addressed to it. Ministers are required
to give explanations whenever the Chamber requires them.

Article 44.
No member of either Chamber can be prosecuted or called to
account for opinions expressed or votes given by him in the
performance of his duties.

Article 45.
No member of either Chamber can be prosecuted or arrested in
affairs of repression, during the session, without the
authorization of the Chamber of which he is a member, except
the case be "de flagrant delit." No bodily constraint can be
exercised against a member of either Chamber during the
session, except with the same authorization. The detention or
the prosecution of a member of either Chamber is suspended
during the whole session if the Chamber so requires.

Article 46.
Each Chamber determines by its rules the mode in which it will
exercise its powers.