River Improvement 141 



munication were, nevertheless, so much cheaper than land 

 carriage that they were followed for about fifty years until 

 a safer and more expeditious waterway was provided through 

 the opening of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. 1 Thomas 

 Baines, from whose " History of the Town and Commerce of 

 Liverpool " I glean these details, adds : 



" With all its defects, the Douglas navigation may be 

 regarded as the primary cause of the manufacturing prosperity 

 of the town of Preston, which it was the first means of supply- 

 ing with cheap fuel for its workshops and factories. It may, 

 also, be considered as one of the early causes of the commercial 

 prosperity of Liverpool, which has always been much promoted 

 by the possession of cheap and abundant supplies of coal and 

 salt." 



The rendering of the Aire and Calder navigable, under an 

 Act of Parliament passed in 1699, was an important event for 

 the then rising manufacturing towns of Leeds, Wakefield, 

 Halifax, Bradford and Huddersfield, situate on or within a 

 convenient distance of one or other of these two rivers which, 

 joining at Castleford, ten miles below Leeds, thence flow 

 in a combined stream to their junction with the Yorkshire Ouse, 

 and so on to the Humber and the ports of Hull and Grimsby. 

 The event in question was no less interesting because it marked 

 a further development in an industrial transition which con- 

 stitutes a leading factor in the economic history of England. 



The textile industries originally established in the eastern 

 counties by refugees from the Netherlands and France after- 

 wards spread through the southern and western counties, 

 attaining in each district to a very considerable growth long 

 before they were of any importance in those northern counties 

 with which they were afterwards mainly to be associated. The 

 migration to the north occurred at a time when the woollen 

 industries were paramount and the cotton industries had still 

 to attain their subsequent stupendous growth. It occurred, 

 also, long before the Aire and the Calder were made navigable, 

 so that, in this case, we cannot say the industrial centres 

 already mentioned as being situated on or near to those two 

 Yorkshire rivers were set up there, as the towns on the river 



1 The Douglas navigation was afterwards purchased by the proprietors 

 of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, who substituted an artificial cut for part 

 of the natural channel of the river. 



