It is not a little curious to find that, whereas the proposed resuscitation of canals is now being actively supported in various quarters as a means of effecting increased competition with the railways, the railway system itself originally had a most cordial welcome from the traders of this country as a means of relieving them from what had become the intolerable monopoly of the canals and waterways!

It will have been seen that in the article published in the Quarterly Review of March 1825, from which I gave extracts in the last Chapter, reference was made to a "Letter on the Subject of the Projected Rail-road between Liverpool and Manchester," by Mr Joseph Sandars, and published that same year. I have looked up the original "Letter," and found in it some instructive reading. Mr Sandars showed that although, under the Act of Parliament obtained by the Duke of Bridgewater, the tolls to be charged on his canal between Liverpool and Manchester were not to exceed 2s. 6d. per ton, his trustees had, by various exactions, increased them to 5s. 2d. per ton on all goods carried along the canal. They had also got possession of all the available land and warehouses along the canal banks at Manchester, thus monopolising the accommodation, or nearly so, and forcing the traders to keep to the trustees, and not patronise independent carriers. It was, Mr Sandars declared, "the most oppressive and unjust monopoly known to the trade of this country—a monopoly which there is every reason to believe compels the public to pay, in one shape or another, £100,000 more per annum than they ought to pay." The Bridgewater trustees and the proprietors of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation were, he continued, "deaf to all remonstrances, to all entreaties"; they were "actuated solely by a spirit of monopoly and extension," and "the only remedy the public has left is to go to Parliament and ask for a new line of conveyance." But this new line, he said, would have to be a railway. It could not take the form of another canal, as the two existing routes had absorbed all the available water-supply.

In discussing the advantages of a railway over a canal, Mr Sandars continued:—

Mr Sandars further wrote:—

In the same year that Mr Sandars issued his "Letter," the merchants of the port of Liverpool addressed a memorial to the Mayor and Common Council of the borough, praying them to support the scheme for the building of a railway, and stating:—

It is clear from all this that, however great the benefit which canal transport had conferred, as compared with prior conditions, the canal companies had abused their monopoly in order to secure what were often enormous profits; that the canals themselves, apart from the excessive tolls and charges imposed, failed entirely to meet the requirements of traders; and that the most effective means of obtaining relief was looked for in the provision of railways.

The value to which canal shares had risen at this time is well shown by the following figures, which I take from the Gentleman's Magazine for December, 1824:—

These substantial values, and the large dividends that led to them, were due in part, no doubt, to the general improvement in trade which the canals had helped most materially to effect; but they had been greatly swollen by the merciless way in which the traders of those days were exploited by the representatives of the canal interest. As bearing on this point, I might interrupt the course of my narrative to say that in the House of Commons on May 17, 1836, Mr Morrison, member for Ipswich, made a speech in which, as reported by Hansard, he expressed himself "clearly of opinion" that "Parliament should, when it established companies for the formation of canals, railroads, or such like undertakings, invariably reserve to itself the power to make such periodical revisions of the rates and charges as it may, under the then circumstances, deem expedient"; and he proposed a resolution to this effect. He was moved to adopt this course in view of past experiences in connection with the canals, and a desire that there should be no repetition of them in regard to the railways then being very generally promoted. In the course of his speech he said:—

At the close of the debate which followed, Mr Morrison withdrew his resolution, owing to the announcement that the matter to which he had called attention would be dealt with in a Bill then being framed. It is none the less interesting thus to find that Parliamentary revisions of railway rates were, in the first instance, directly inspired by the extortions practised on the traders by canal companies in the interest of dividends far in excess of any that the railway companies have themselves attempted to pay.

Reverting to the story of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway—the projection of which, as Mr Sandars' "Letter" shows, represented a revolt against "the exorbitant and unjust charges of the water-carriers"—the Bill promoted in its favour was opposed so vigorously by the canal and other interests that £70,000 was spent in the Parliamentary proceedings in getting it through. But it was carried in 1826, and the new line, opened in 1830, was so great a success that it soon began to inspire many similar projects in other directions, while with its opening the building of fresh canals for ordinary inland navigation (as distinct from ship canals) practically ceased.

There is not the slightest doubt that, but for the extreme dissatisfaction of the trading interests in regard alike to the heavy charges and to the shortcomings of the canal system, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway—that precursor of the "railway mania"—would not have been actually constructed until at least several years later. But there were other directions, also, in which the revolt against the then existing conditions was to bring about important developments. In the pack-horse period the collieries of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire respectively supplied local needs only, the cost of transport by road making it practically impossible to send coal out of the county in which it was raised. With the advent of canals the coal could be taken longer distances, and the canals themselves gained so much from the business that at one time shares in the Loughborough Canal, on which £142 had been paid, rose, as already shown, to £4,600, and were looked upon as being as safe as Consols. But the collapse of a canal from the Leicestershire coal-fields to the town of Leicester placed the coalowners of that county at a disadvantage, and this they overcame, in 1832, by opening the Leicester and Swinnington line of railway. Thereupon the disadvantage was thrown upon the Nottinghamshire coalowners, who could no longer compete with Leicestershire. In fact, the immediate outlook before them was that they would be excluded from their chief markets, that their collieries might have to be closed, and that the mining population would be thrown out of employment.

In their dilemma they appealed to the canal companies, and asked for such a reduction in rates as would enable them to meet the new situation; but the canal companies—wedded to their big dividends—would make only such concessions as were thought by the other side to be totally inadequate. Following on this the Nottinghamshire coalowners met in the parlour of a village inn at Eastwood, in the autumn of 1832, and formally declared that "there remained no other plan for their adoption than to attempt to lay a railway from their collieries to the town of Leicester." The proposal was confirmed by a subsequent meeting, which resolved that "a railway from Pinxton to Leicester is essential to the interests of the coal-trade of this district." Communications were opened with George Stephenson, the services of his son Robert were secured, the "Midland Counties Railway" was duly constructed, and the final outcome of the action thus taken—as the direct result of the attitude of the canal companies—is to be seen in the splendid system known to-day as the Midland Railway.

Once more, I might refer to Mr Charles H. Grinling's "History of the Great Northern Railway," in which, speaking of early conditions, he says:—

In this particular instance it was George Hudson, the "Railway King," who was approached, and the first lines were laid of what is now the Great Northern Railway.

So it happened that, when the new form of transport came into vogue, in succession to the canals, it was essentially a case of "Railways to the Rescue."