Page:The Channel Tunnel, Ought the Democracy to Oppose Or Support It?.djvu/15

 send a body of troops through the tunnel, and thus obtain an important military advantage. Such a body of troops could readily intrench themselves, and could be rapidly reinforced.

"If, however, suitable defensive arrangements are made, such an undertaking would be impracticable, and even in case of war being imminent, no fears need be entertained which might lead to the partial destruction of this costly work."

In April, 1876, the French Ambassador at the Court of St. James applied on behalf of La Société Française Concessionnaire du Chemin de Fer Sous-Marin entre la France et l'Angleterre for the permission of her Majesty's Government to take soundings in British waters near Dover for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the bottom of that part of the English Channel, and the Board of Trade were informed by the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury, on the 10th June following, that the necessary application had been granted.

Although a Channel Tunnel Company, with Lord Stalbridge (then Lord R. Grosvenor) as chairman, had obtained an Act of Parliament in 1875 authorising the commencement of experimental tunnelling works, nothing was really done by way of submarine boring from the English coast until the summer of 1880, when the borings just referred to were commenced by the South Eastern Railway, which obtained special powers from Parliament in 1881 for continuing the work and purchasing the necessary land. These works and powers were taken over and continued in 1882 by the Submarine Continental Railway Company, Limited. The new company, however, found itself almost immediately interrupted in the work by the