164 History of Inland Transport 



While, also, Bedfordshire was producing " great quantities 

 of the best wheat in England," the wheat itself had to be 

 taken, from some parts of the county, a distance of twenty 

 miles by road to the markets of Hertford or Hitchin, whence, 

 after being bought and ground into flour, it was taken on, 

 still by road, a further distance of twenty-five or thirty miles 

 to London. The farmers and millers of Bedfordshire were 

 thus unable to enjoy the same advantages of river transport 

 as were open to those on the Wey or the Upper Thames. 



In addition to all this, representations came from many 

 different quarters of the neglect of natural advantages and 

 other opportunities where means of transport apart from 

 bad roads were wholly lacking. Numerous pamphlets issued 

 in favour of one canal scheme or another pointed to the 

 opportunities that were being lost or allowed to remain 

 dormant. In, for example, " A Cursory View of the Ad- 

 vantages of an Intended Canal from Chesterfield to Gains- 

 borough," published in 1769, it was said : " The country 

 contiguous to Chesterfield abounds chiefly with bulky and 

 ponderous Products, such as Lead, Corn, Timber, Coals, Iron- 

 stones and a considerable Manufacture of earthen Ware, all 

 of which have been for Ages past conveyed by Land, at a 

 prodigious Expense." An advocate of a navigable canal 

 between Liverpool and Hull had much to say about the un- 

 developed resources of that district. Whitworth declared 

 that there were " many large mines of valuable contents," 

 such as stone, iron ore, and marble, together with " quarries 

 of various sorts," that would be " opened and set to work," 

 if only inland navigation were better developed, while the 

 cheapening of the cost of raw materials would, he declared, 

 lead manufacturers to embark on new enterprises. Arch- 

 deacon Plymley told how, even at the date he wrote (1803), 

 there was, in many of the midland and southern parishes of 

 Shropshire, " no tolerable horse-road whatever," adding, 

 " and in some that have coal and lime these articles are nearly 

 useless from the difficulty of bringing any carriage to them." 



However substantial, therefore, the results to which the 

 navigable rivers had led, it was found by the middle of the 

 eighteenth century that there was real need for entirely new 

 efforts, and these were now to be made in the direction of 

 supplementing alike rivers and roads by artificial waterways. 



