RAILWAY JEALOUSY.
What is the reason for blocking the course of a river that might be very popular and presumably useful ? Doubt- less one of the reasons why river traffic for commercial purposes failed was the dog-in-the-manger policy of the railways. Close by in Rutland they went so far, I believe, as deliberately to fill up canals, and their policy was at one time so to handle rates and control key points that water transport should be choked out. But let that point pass, for the sake of a more important matter. In the first instance, the locks were built by private enterprise (as, to some extent, the Fens were drained). They were therefore and have remained private property ; and, like private property such as a house, they can be bought and sold. Whoever owns them can do almost as he pleases, though some old rights, that puzzle the most expert lawyers, here and there cut in and complicate the issue. The millers (who are a vanishing body) have certain powers, and in recent years Godmanchester, as a unit, has been able to vindicate certain rather negative rights. But in essentials it is true that whatever private person owns the locks can, at his own sweet will, play the destructive autocrat of what should be a national or at least municipal or county possession.
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