Page:Shall we have a Channel tunnel?.djvu/21

15 make a Tunnel towards England, provided certain conditions were fulfilled, while the English Act of Parliament (pp. 40, 41) merely authorized the Channel Tunnel Company (Limited) to acquire lands at St. Margaret's Bay, and carry out such operations as might be authorized by the Board of Trade, under the proviso that the Company should be bound by any conditions which might afterwards be imposed, in consequence of negotiations with the French Government."

The actual words of the Bill are, that "the Company should be empowered to purchase and take certain lands, houses, and buildings at the foot of the cliff in St. Margaret's Bay, in the parish of St. Margaret at Cliffe, in the county of Kent, lying between Ness Point and Coney Burrow Point, and including the beach and foreshore abutting on the said lands". The village of St. Margaret at Cliffe is three miles, or three miles and a half, N.E. of Dover, a high situation on the chalk cliff, and not far from the South Foreland.

"The Joint Commission met at Paris from the 29th January, 1876, to the 5th February, 1876, and in London, from the 22nd to the 30th May, 1876 (p. 166).

"The Joint Commission agreed to the jurisdiction of each Government, ceasing at a point to be marked in the centre of the proposed Tunnel, and recommended the appointment of an International Commission of six members to advise the two Governments on the construction, maintenance and working of the submarine railway.

"The Commissioners further agreed that each Government should have the right to suspend the working of the railway by damaging, destroying, or flooding the Tunnel, whenever such Government should in the interest of its own country, think necessary to do so, though the concession to the French Company only gives the French Government the right of stopping the traffic. Their report is given pp. 166-174.

"At the close of 1876, the position of affairs was as follows:—

"The French promoters had obtained their concession subject to certain conditions and the capital required was to be found, half by the Chemin de fer du Nord, one quarter by the French