Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 2/Ana (January 7, 1860)
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ANA.
A Prophet at Fault.—Apropos of canals and railways we find it announced, with becoming gravity, in the “Monthly Register” for 1803, that “another canal of great national importance is about to be constructed from Deptford to Portsmouth and Southampton, passing by Guildford, Godalming, and Winchester.” After a detail of its estimated cost, the editor remarks, “a canal in this instance is to be preferred to an iron railway-road, because the expense of carriage by a canal is much cheaper than that of carriage by a railway.” The writer could not foresee the effect of the steam-engine in diminishing the difference, and hence his inference that railway could never compete with canal-carriage. Happily such prophets are not infallible.