canals, navigation rights, and right to forced labour for 3,200,000%. ; and the construction of the canal specified as above is authorised.

Then the company sells to the Viceroy for 1,200,000l. all its remaining special privileges and exemptions-land and buildings; abandons all back claims, and admits that its only object' is the canal; the concession for which is specially declared by repetition to cease in ninety-nine years.

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With such facts as these before us it is somewhat difficult to divine the case to be answered. One very eminent legal authority has said that the true construction to be placed upon the convention' (sic) is that as long as the concession lasts the ruler of Egypt could not grant to any company the power of constructing a canal. It does not appear whether by the convention' he meant all the documents, which we doubt; but assuming that he did, on what an absurd position does not such a dictum land us! A company is formed to do a certain thing, and does it. Other things, identical in quality, require to be done. The first company is occupied in doing the thing it was created to do. Is the grantor unable to give like grants because he has already given one? That is to say, is the commerce of the world to be blocked for eighty years in order that imaginary principles may be maintained which have no foundation in any precedent or practice that either has been or can be adduced?

A second argument, implied chiefly in the speeches of members of the Government, is what may be termed the moral argument, and this is of such extreme importance to commercial interests that no commercial man is likely to underrate it. It is said that in giving M. de Lesseps exclusive power to form a company for working a canal in the Isthmus of Suez, there was an implied obligation not to give a similar power to another, because the first having spent its money had a right to be remunerated for its outlay, and that such a second grant would be an injustice. The legal ground upon which, in the case of the Suez Canal, this view is supported, is that the Concession (or the concession of the Concession) is a franchise, and that the Crown would have no right to grant another franchise within the same limits to another person. We may perhaps be permitted to ask in what does a canal differ from a railway? Simply in that the bearing surface of the load carried is water instead of iron. In every other respect the circumstances of the constitution of the Suez Canal and of the London and North-Western Railway are in principle identical, and yet the authority in that behalf granted a second power to make a line within the same limits to the Great Northern Company, and a third to the Midland Company, and to the London and North-Western Company itself a line within the limits of the Great Western Company, and so on, ad infinitum. The power to form a company may have been what British law regards as a franchise, or it may not; but, assuming that it was, the franchise

granted went no further than the power to form a joint-stock company, to be constituted by statutes framed at the will of the Viceroy. Once the company formed, the franchise terminated. It has been said that any one could form a company. That is true in principle, but not so in practice. A company in Egypt without a concession in the time of Ismail, or even now, would be a lay figure. Then, as to a Concession for a work of public utility which would justify forcible expropriation of lands. It is a creature of the nineteenth century, begotten of coal and iron, and baptised with water at 212°, whose general rights and obligations are thoroughly familiar to the people of Continental nations. It is a contract-a contract to do some particular work for the public, in return for which certain charges may be made; but that a concession carries a monopoly, unless so stated in terms, has never been so much as hinted, except by M. de Lesseps. Every foreign investor is aware that other concessions may be granted, but his security lies in this, that unless there is business enough for two, or more, as the case may be, no other concession would be applied for. And that, all said and done, is the essence of the present case. The cause of all the hubbub seems to have been overlooked in the din of contending parties. The traffic has outgrown the canal. It already carries more tonnage and is earning larger dividends than it was projected to carry or was expected to earn ; and what is more, the probabilities are that the freight likely to seek passage through the Isthmus is within measurable distance of being not only doubled, but trebled and quadrupled. Is the future to be tied up that the existing canal may lie like a dog in the manger, while ships rot at their anchorage in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean? Then where is the injustice of allowing some one else to do the surplus work? That is the true measure of the moral strength of a concession. Undoubtedly it would be considered sharp practice on the part of the ruler of a State to grant a second concession with concurrent powers in the case of a canal, railway, or other similar undertaking unless really required. But it would be not the less within his competence, and would be his duty to his country if the state of business warranted it.

If it were not so, what would be the condition of France, of Germany, of Spain, or of any civilised nation at the present time?

There are half-a-dozen ways of getting from Paris to the south of France, or from the frontier of Spain to the Mediterranean. If the implied monopoly principle were to have prevailed, where there are now three or four main lines there would be but one. There is no monopoly, and no one knows it better than M. de Lesseps himself. I appeal to his own practice. What has he done in the case of the Panama Canal? He has done what he had a perfect right to do if he could get it; he has procured not a pouvoir exclusif to form a company to make a canal, but a 'monopoly of making canals through the Isthmus of Panama, during the time of his concession.' Why

did he do that if the pouvoir exclusif gave a monopoly? Because, knowing that it did not, like a prudent man he procured a concession couched in terms that do.

It always has been the case, and always will be, that individual rights of property, whether in respect of industrial works, personal privileges, lands or buildings, whatever in short may be in the enjoyment of one to the exclusion of the many, whether conferred by a general or by a special law, are subject to be restricted by limitations, varying in method and degree, but applicable for the general good. Surely it is not in the nineteenth century, when rights consecrated by ages of enjoyment are being shorn of their immutability in subservience to a higher law, that a contrary principle will find acceptance. We have shown that the Suez Canal Company has had no monopoly conferred upon it in terms, that its rights and obligations have been set out with unexampled preciseness, and that there is nothing either in law or equity, commercial practice, or morality, which substantiates or justifies a claim to a monopoly, which, if conceded, would be a gratuitous gift at the expense of the commerce of the world and the intercommunication of the millions peopling the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

C. MAGNIAC.

STATUES AND MONUMENTS OF

LONDON.

LONDON, the metropolis of wealth and fashion, has also from the earliest times been the centre to which the ablest men of the country have come. It has offered an irresistible attraction to them. Here alone could those conscious of possessing exceptional gifts and capacities be certain of finding their equals, and of securing the recognition due to them. Omitting those whose pursuits necessarily brought them to the centre of affairs and of business, such as statesmen, lawyers, merchants, artists, and actors, we find that literary men, poets, historians, and humorists, men of such varied intellects as Chancer and Milton, Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, Dickens and Thackeray, Carlyle and Macaulay, made London their home, and identified their names with it.

It may be worth while to consider in what manner London has done honour to its greatest citizens. To some, statues have been erected in its public places; to others, burial in Westminster Abbey or in St. Paul's, with or without a monument, has been accorded; and to some, again, who have been buried elsewhere, cenotaphs or busts have been erected in one or other of these great fanes.

Of statues, in proportion to the vast extent of London, we have, perhaps fortunately, but few. It is only within the present century that they have been erected in the open air to others than our sovereigns. The earliest statue was that of Charles the First. From his time to the present each successive occupant of the throne has been honoured in the same manner. Few of these statues, however, have come up to the level of the first. As is well known, the statue of Charles the First was the work, in 1633, of Hubert le Sueur, a pupil of John of Bologna, executed at the cost of Lord Arundel, the collector of antique marbles. It was probably one of the first which cast aside armour or classical costume, and represented its subject in the dress he ordinarily wore, and the horse with its usual caparison, minus only its saddle-girths. During the Commonwealth this statue was sold, with the express condition that it should be broken up. Its purchaser, a brazier, hid the statue against better times, and meanwhile made a profit by selling supposed relics of it; on the Restora

tion the statue again appeared, and was mounted on a pedestal, designed by the celebrated Grinling Gibbons, on the site where General Harrison and four other regicides were hanged. The statue has great merit; it is worthy of its position and subject, reminding one not a little, from some points of view, of Vandyke's portraits of the King.

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We are indebted for statues of Charles the Second and James the Second to Tobias Rustat, a page of the back stairs of the royal palace, whom Evelyn mentions as a very simple, ignorant, but honest and loyal creature.' He accumulated wealth through various patent offices, and showed his gratitude to his royal masters by lending money for erection of their statues (without expectation of repayment). Of two statues of Charles the Second, one, said to be by Grinling Gibbons, is in front of Chelsea Hospital, the other at Windsor; that of James the Second, certainly executed by Gibbons, one of the very best statues in London, stands in the quiet place at the back of Whitehall Chapel, near to the spot where his father was executed. The figure is in classical armour, with flowing robes. Gibbons received 500l. for it-a large sum in those days. William the Third remained without monument of any kind, even in the Abbey, where he was buried, till more than a century after his death, when an equestrian statue of him was erected in St. James's Square by J. Bacon (1808). Of Queen Anne there are three existing statues, viz., in front of St. Paul's and in the centre of the two squares called after her. The best is in Queen's Square West. George the First stands on the campanile of Bloomsbury Church. Of George the Second we had till lately a statue in Leicester Square: it was sunk into a pit, while the square was occupied by Mr. Wyld's Globe,' and reappeared so mutilated that it was removed and made away with. Few people would suppose that George the Third would be a good subject for a statue; but when a young man his figure was slight and graceful. There are two statues of him, the one in the courtyard of Somerset House by J. Bacon, representing him in his early years, in a classical style with bare arms and legs-one of the most effective works in London. In front of it there is a semi-recumbent figure representing the Thames, of great power. He was still more happy in his second statue, an equestrian figure by Matthew Wyatt, in Pall Mall East; one of very great merit, full of spirit, and with a certain charm of simplicity combined with action.

The statue of George the Fourth by Chantrey, an equestrian figure of much nobility, was intended to surmount the Marble Arch, when in front of Buckingham Palace, but has found a place on one of the pedestals in front of the National Gallery, and so far no fitting companion has been found for the corresponding pedestal. The statues of William the Fourth in Cannon Street and of Queen Victoria in the Royal Exchange require no comments. Of other royal personages we have the Duke of York, by Westmacott in 1836,