adequately equipped for the endless and more active campaign of the future.

Who, reading the evidence given before the Royal Commission on the Port of London, can say that the Port of London is what it should be? A river clamouring to be made deep enough for the mighty ships which come to it, and which, we may hope, will come to it in yet greater number and yet mightier. The dock quays crying out to be enlarged and provided with adequate shedroom. The trade of the port mainly carried on -and well carried on-by barges, and little or no accommodation or provision for this special trade; the barges waiting to be loaded at the quays piled up with goods, and unable to come at them because of the ships discharging there. The owners of the ships clamouring for prompt despatch, and wrathful at having to pay out of their own pockets charges for sorting and delivery borne in Liverpool by the consignees, but which in London ancient custom charges to indignant carriers. The railways, whose iron fingers should reach around the up-river docks, and the palm of whose smoke-grimed hand should provide an ample shunting ground and sidings for every dock, unduly driven to the use of barges to supplement connection with their rolling-stock. Who

can say that the Port of London is what it should be? If Tilbury dock and the docks of prosperous Hull are not wastefully supplied with rails, then surely some of the London docks are lamentably behind the needs. And if Antwerp and Hull and the great Rhine and Elbe and Weser ports carry prosperity to their objective cities by-at least in the case of the foreign ports-giant barges on well-equipped canals, how do we justify to ourselves the neglect and disuse of our costly inland waterways?

The times have changed, and we have not sufficiently changed with them. The Port of London possesses, no doubt, great natural advantages and many excellent features; and there is, in fact, no port which is not now suffering under drawbacks or disadvantages of some or several sorts. And in the above remarks there is no intention to belittle or decry the advantages of London, and certainly no desire to suggest blame on any for its shortcomings. But the times have changed, and be the cause or explanation what it may, we have not sufficiently changed with them. If the system and adjuncts of the port were to be reconstructed to suit the conditions of to-day; and, still more, if they were to be reconstructed to meet the conditions of what will be the great

trade rivalry of the future; we should look back with something like amazement at the port facilities which at present have to serve the purpose. Vast sums of money will need to be spent to make London the port which it should be, and which, if our ancient city is to maintain and improve its position, it must be,-vast sums of money and many years of time. But London is in no want of money, and in any case money we must spend. And as to time, have we not all there is? Time, that is to say, in which to push to a satisfactory conclusion the work which needs to be undertaken, but no time for delay in its commencement. The work should certainly be put in hand with the least possible delay. That it will be so the legislative proposals before the nation give us at any rate grounds to hope.