If the River Nidd and the brooks adjacent, in the vicinity of Knaresbro’, up the valley to Ramsgill, near Pateley-Bridge, and near the adopted line, had not possessed the many water-falls, and given motion to the sixty-seven mills which they do;—or had the great landed proprietors, on the line now adopted been hostile to this all improving project, of this highly favoured and not less honoured, their native district;—or had the hand of Nature, when it varied the surface of our earth, no doubt for wise purposes, and formed those high hills, composed their bowels of any other substance than what it is;—or had the commercial necessities of Knaresbro’ and its neighbourhood not existed, and the slow progress of their redemption, compared with others, at one time of far less note, not been too apparent; then, perhaps, this project, commendable as it is, would have shared the same fate, during a season of sickness, which it did twenty years ago.
But since these falls of water do exist, and are always ready to lend their willing aid to turn the ponderous wheels which impart motion to many mill-stones and many thousand spindles, beyond the possibility of denial;—and since the great landed proprietors have expressed nothing unfriendly to the project, but, if any thing, the reverse, at this moment of national difficulties and distress, highly to their credit and understanding;—and since the all-wise hand of Providence hath permitted an unceasing demand in one place, and a never-failing supply in another, at distances perhaps the most suitable and interesting for a work of this kind; [vi]—and, considering the necessity which the commerce of this district so evidently requires in an improved mode of transporting, from place to place, its heavy weights, with despatch and cheapness; then there can be no doubt of the propriety of prosecuting a scheme of this kind, so long, as we believe, on substantial data, that the completion of it will reward the shareholder, and give to this place what it once possessed, and be the means of rendering it again the first district in the kingdom for the manufacture of linens.
