Disadvantages of River Navigation 163 



the expense of water carriage, and sometimes even refuse to 

 supply their orders at all, rather than run the risque of for- 

 feiting their credit and submitting to the deductions that are 

 made on this account. 



" We may also add, with respect to the potteries in Stafford- 

 shire, that this evil discourages merchants abroad from dealing 

 with those manufacturers, and creates innumerable misunder- 

 standings between them and the manufacturers." 



These complaints seem to have been made not without 

 good cause. In 1751 it had been found expedient to pass 

 an Act " for the more effectual prevention of robberies and 

 thefts upon any navigable river, ports of entry or discharge, 

 wharves or quays adjacent." Any person stealing goods 

 of the value of forty shillings from any ship, barge, boat, or 

 any vessel on any navigable river or quay adjacent thereto, 

 was, on conviction, to suffer death ! The penalty seems to 

 have been modified into one of transportation ; and in 1752 

 thirteen persons were convicted under the new Act, and sent 

 across the seas. 



Many traders could not derive any advantage from river 

 transport. This was the case with the cheese-makers of 

 Warwickshire when they sought to compete with those of 

 Cheshire, or, alternatively, with those of Gloucester, who 

 could take their cheese by road to Lechdale or Crickdale, 

 on the Thames, and send it down that river to London. 

 "The Warwickshire Men," says Defoe, "have no Water 

 Carriage at all, or at least not 'till they have carry'd it a 

 long way by Land to Oxford, but as their Quantity is ex- 

 ceedingly great, and they supply not only the City of London 

 but also the Counties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, 

 Huntingdon, Hertford, Bedford, and Northampton, the 

 Gross of their Carriage is by mere dead Draught, and they 

 carry it either to London by Land, which is full an hundred 

 miles, and so the London cheese-mongers supply the said 

 counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, besides Kent and 

 Sussex and Surrey by Sea and River Navigation ; or the 

 Warwickshire Men carry it by Land once a Year to Stur- 

 bridge Fair, whence the Shopkeepers of all the Inland Country 

 above named come to buy it ; in all which Cases Land- 

 carriage being long, when the Ways were generally bad it 

 made it very dear to the Poor, who are the chief Consumers." 



