1 82 History of Inland Transport 



that People, so unaccustomed, should consider an Attempt, 

 to introduce a navigable Canal up to the Town of Chester- 

 field, and within the Air of the Peak-Mountains, with alarming 

 Ideas, with Suspicion and Amazement." 



Another set of scruples was thus dealt with by Richard 

 Whitworth himself a canal enthusiast in his " Advantages 

 of Inland Navigation " (1766) : 



" It has been a common objection against navigable canals 

 in this Kingdom that numbers of people are supported by 

 land carriage, and that navigable canals will be their ruin. 

 ... I must advance an alternative which would free the 

 carrier from any fear of losing his employment on selling off 

 his stock of horses, viz.: That no main trunk of a navigable 

 canal ought reasonably to be carried nearer than within 

 four miles of any great manufacturing town, . . . which 

 distance from the canal is sufficient to maintain the same 

 number of carriers, and employ almost the same number of 

 horses, as usual, to convey the goods down to the canal in 

 order to go to the seaports for exportation. ... If a manu- 

 facturer can have a certain conveniency of sending his goods 

 by water carriage within four miles of his own home, surely that 

 is sufficient, and profit enough, considering that other people 

 must thrive as well as himself, and a proportion of profit to 

 each trade should be the biassing and leading policy of this 

 nation." 



In some instances certain towns did succeed in maintaining 

 a distance of several miles between themselves and the canals 

 they regarded with prejudice and disfavour. They antici- 

 pated, in this respect, the action that other towns were to 

 take up later on in regard to railways ; and in the one case 

 as in the other there was abundant cause for regret when the 

 places concerned found they had been left aside, much to 

 their detriment, by a main route of trade and transport. 



Other alarmists predicted the ruin of the innkeepers ; 

 protested against the drivers of packhorses being deprived 

 of their sustenance ; prophesied a diminution in the breed 

 of draught horses ; declaimed against covering with water- 

 ways land that might be better used for raising corn ; and 

 foreshadowed a detriment to the coasting trade that, in 

 turn, would weaken the Navy, " the natural and constitu- 

 tional bulwark of Great Britain " this being a phrase which, 



