192 History of Inland Transport 



The rapid expansion in the last half of the eighteenth 

 century of the various industries here mentioned, and of 

 many others besides, led to a corresponding growth in the 

 industrial towns ; and this, in turn, meant an increase in 

 the wants of the community, and the opening up of new 

 and even huge markets for agricultural produce. Such 

 produce, also, was now obtainable in greater quantity owing 

 to the fact that more land was being brought under cultiva- 

 tion. In 1685 it had been estimated that there were in Eng- 

 land about 18,000,000 acres of fen, forest and moorland. 

 Of this total 3,000,000 acres had been brought under cultiva- 

 tion before 1727. But from that time many enclosure Acts 

 were passed, no fewer than 138 becoming law between 1789 

 and 1792 ; and, though it by no means follows that all the 

 land so enclosed was actually cultivated, the greater op- 

 portunities opening out to agriculture when more and more 

 workers were being collected into factories and manufacturing 

 districts, and becoming more and more dependent on others 

 for food supplies which, under the old conditions of life and 

 industry, people grew for themselves, were beyond all ques- 

 tion, while agricultural production was itself advanced by 

 the supply of those better and cheaper aids to husbandry 

 which followed on the improvements in iron manufacture. 



To meet the enormously increased demands for the trans- 

 port alike of raw materials, of manufactured articles and of 

 domestic supplies in the period of industrial revolution which 

 thus began to develop about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, something more was wanted than rivers, offering 

 uncertain navigation, and only available in particular dis- 

 tricts, and highways deplorably bad in spite of Turnpike Acts 

 and much wasteful expenditure, another half-century having 

 still to elapse before Telford showed the country how roads 

 should be made, and Me Adam told how they should be mended. 



In these circumstances, and during the period here in ques- 

 tion, it was canals that were mainly looked to as a means 

 of supplying the transport requirements then growing at 

 so prodigious a rate. Invention and production had already 

 far surpassed the means of efficient distribution. England 

 was on the eve of the greatest industrial expansion of any 

 country in Europe ; but she was starting thereon with prob- 

 ably the worst means of inland transport of any country in 



