The Canal Era 171 



navigation on the faith of their being protected by Parlia- 

 ment ; and that for Parliament now to allow a canal to be 

 established to compete with them would be a gross inter- 

 ference with their vested rights. Active opposition was also 

 offered by landowners whose property was to be either taken 

 for the canal or, as they argued, would be deteriorated by 

 it in value ; and still more opposition came from traders 

 interested in the river navigation. The controversy of the 

 pro-canal and anti-canal parties even got mixed up with 

 politics, Brindley writing in his notebook that " the Toores 

 mad had agane ye Duk " (" the Tories made head against 

 the Duke "). 



But, in the result, the Duke got his Bill, and Brindley pro- 

 ceeded to make the canal. It proved to be a far more costly 

 work than had been anticipated. In a total length of about 

 twenty-four miles from Longford Bridge, Manchester (where 

 it connected with the Worsley Canal), to Runcorn, it passed 

 through a bog with a quicksand bottom ; it crossed two 

 rivers ; it required numerous aqueducts, and it necessitated 

 the provision of many road bridges and culverts, together 

 with a flight of locks at Runcorn to overcome the difference 

 between the canal level and the Mersey level, this being the 

 first occasion on which locks of this kind had been constructed 

 in England. 



Even the Duke of Bridgewater's ample fortune did not 

 suffice to meet the expense of the costly work he had thus 

 taken upon himself. There came a time when his means 

 were exhausted, and he found the greatest difficulty in re- 

 plenishing them. No one either in Liverpool or in Manchester 

 would honour for him a bill for 500 on a then doubtful 

 enterprise. There were Saturday nights when the Duke 

 had not sufficient money to pay the men's wages, and when 

 he had to raise loans of 5 or 10 from among his tenants. 

 He reduced his personal expenditure to 400 a year, while 

 the recompense that Brindley received from him for carrying 

 out schemes which were to be the wonder of England and 

 introduce a new era in locomotion never exceeded three-and- 

 sixpence a day, and was more often only half a crown a 

 day. 



The Duke eventually surmounted his financial difficulties 

 by borrowing, altogether, .25,000 from Messrs. Child, the 



