The Report of the British Directors of the Suez Canal,
Sir 3, Stokes and Sir C. Rivers Wilson, was published on Monday, and it would have been well, we think, if it had been ready for publication, and had been laid on the table of both Houses on the day when Mr. Childers made his first statement. The directors point out that the separate up-and-down line of canal secured under the agreement—a much better one than any which M. de Lesseps could construct without a new concession of land — would remove those obstacles to the traffic which now create so much complaint ; that so soon as the dividend reaches thirty per cent., the amount of profit surrendered under this agreement to the mer- cantile world would reach £1,175,000; and that the appoint- ment of an English " inspector of navigation" and the engagement of English pilots would remove almost all the small inconveniences appertaining to the foreign origin of the Company; and finally, that the advance of English capital is solely desirable to the French Company on account of the saving in the rate of interest, —which saving the agreement pro- vides that the mercantile community shall receive in the shape of diminished dues. Indeed, we ourselves have no doubt that the French Company would have been only too glad, for every other reason, to raise their new capital in France, and so enlist against the English influence the disastrous power of the French stock- jobbers.
