The Daily Dispatch: December 16, 1865., [Electronic resource]

Among the many subjects which it was the custom of the Dispatch, in the days before the war, to keep habitually before the public, there was no one, the importance of which to the future welfare of the State it esteemed so transcendent as the engagement entered into by the James River and Kanawha Company with a French Association, represented in this country by M. De Bellot de Minieres, for the transfer of its interest in that great improvement. As the events of the last four years may very naturally have somewhat impaired the reader's memory of those transactions, we will give a brief summary of the whole affair down to the present time.

It cannot be forgotten that the private stockholders agreed to transfer all their rights to the company in question upon their undertaking to begin the improvement within a certain period (twelve months, we believe), and to complete it in six years, and upon their depositing in one of the banks the sum of $500,000, or $1,000,000, we forget which. To obtain a transfer of the interest of the State, legislative intervention was necessary. Accordingly, a petition was presented to that body, and a charter, based upon the charter of the James River and Kanawha Company, with certain modifications, was granted to the French Company only three weeks before the State of Virginia seceded. In it was a provise that the work should be commenced within a certain period, and completed within six years, provided such commencement and completion were not rendered impossible by the occurrence of war. War did occur, not by any act of the French Company, but in consequence of the act of Virginia herself, that State having seceded from the Union three weeks after the passage of the charter, as we have already said.

No sooner had peace been re-established than the French Company commenced an active correspondence with the President of the James River and Kanawha Company, in which they professed themselves ready and anxious to proceed immediately to the fulfilment of their contract. Since it was impossible to have commenced the work during the war, and since the war was not brought on by any act or omission of theirs, they hold that their not having done so within the time stipulated, does not work any forfeiture of their right to begin now. And they say the same thing with regard to the time within which they were limited to complete the work. But two years remain, if their six years are to be dated from 1861; but they claim the whole six years, dated from the time when they shall begin. This is all very reasonable, and we presume no objection will be made. The Company claim that the State has already granted them an absolute and indefeasible charter. We think so, too; and we think, moreover, that such would be the decision of any court of justice-upon earth. Nevertheless, Governor Peirpoint thought that some further legislation was necessary, and the matter is again before the Legislature. We will not allow ourselves to believe that the decision can be for a moment doubtful.

It is proper to say that M. Paul, the French Consul at this port, has made several official calls upon the President of the Company since the return of peace, with the view of obtaining information, and expressing the deep interest which he was instructed to say was felt in official quarters at home in the progress of the affair. On two occasions he had received instructions from M. de Montholon, the French Minister at Washington, to say that the French Government felt the deepest solicitude with regard to the undertaking, and would back it with all its moral influence.

We have lately heard from high political authority that the scheme of uniting the waters of James river with those of the Kanawha is impracticable. We do not believe one word of it. If the Alps can be tunneled, we do not see why the Alleghany may not be. Money can do anything in the way of engineering, and this Company has a capital of thirty millions. So many of these impossible things have been done of late years, that the word impossible, in its modern sense, hardly means even very difficult. The wise men in Parliament said it was impossible to make a train run ten miles an hour, and denounced George Stephenson as a liar and braggart for affirming that it could; and Dr. Lardner pronounced steam navigation of the Atlantic to be impossible, in a public lecture, not more than a month before the Great Western made her trial trip. To say that a thing is impossible, is, in such cases, merely to say "I am no engineer." The very Alleghanies themselves can be dug down if there be money enough to pay for the job. The question, and the only question is, is the treasure in view so great that the Company will go to any very great expense about it? We answer, it is. The Company itself owns immense bodies of coal land in Kanawha, which will become enormously valuable — every foot of it — as soon as a route sufficiently cheap can be opened to the Atlantic. This is one item: In France there is no coal. France is increasing in manufactures. France must must have coal. She gets it from England, and she pays half a dozen prices for it. Now, the French Company maintain that, with this water line, they can place upon the wharves at St. Nazaire millions of tons of the best cannel coal, which they can sell much cheaper than English coal can be bought. Again, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Erie Canal are already closed, and will remain so until next Spring. This proposed water line would not be closed three weeks in the year. It would therefore prove a most formidable rival of those improvements. But without drawing away from them one ton of produce, it would command millions per annum from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The Erie Canal built up the city of New York. It brings more, by one hundred per cent., into the city than all the railroads put together that enter the city. This little canal here brings fully as much as all the railroads combined. We wish to see the railroads pushed out as far to the West as possible. They are the handmaids of such a canal as this ought to be. They flourish better together, and ought to be as inseparable as man and wife. But no railroad, or combination of railroads, can give us what the water line will give.