232 History of Inland Transport 



As for the profits of the undertaking, Sandars says : " There 

 is good reason to believe that the nett income of the Duke's 

 canal has, for the last twenty years, averaged nearly ^100,000 

 per annum." 



The Old Quay Company had refrained from exceeding the 

 amounts they were authorised to charge for tolls on the 

 Irwell and the Mersey ; but there was no restriction on them 

 in regard to traffic they themselves carried, and Sandars 

 alleges that they, also, had secured all the warehouse accom- 

 modation on their own line of route, and had almost mono- 

 polised the carrying trade, since a bye-carrier's business could 

 hardly be conducted without warehouses. They were thus 

 making far more money than they could have got from the 

 statutory tolls alone. So profitable had the undertaking 

 become that the thirty-nine original proprietors had, Sandars 

 continues, " been paid every other year, for nearly half a 

 century, the total amount of their investment." An immense 

 revenue was being raised at the expense of the merchants 

 and manufacturers, " and for no other purpose than to 

 enrich a few individuals who were daily violating Acts of 

 Parliament, Acts which, by a long course of cunning policy," 

 they had contrived to convert into " the most oppressive 

 and unjust monopoly known to the trade of this Kingdom 

 a monopoly which," Sandars goes on to declare, " there is 

 every reason to believe compels the public to pay, in one 

 shape or another, ^100,000 more per annum than they ought 

 to pay." 



The agents of the two companies not only agreed be- 

 tween themselves what charges they would impose but, 

 autocrats as they were, they established a despotic sway over 

 the traders. They set up, says Francis, " a rotation by which 

 they sent as much or as little as suited them, and shipped 

 it how or when they pleased. They held levees, attended 

 by crowds who, admitted one by one, almost implored them 

 to forward their goods. One firm was thus limited by the 

 supreme wisdom of the canal managers to sixty or seventy 

 bags a day. The effects were really disastrous ; mills stood 

 still for want of material ; machines were stopped for lack 

 of food. Of 5000 feet of pine timber required in Manchester 

 by one house, 2000 remained unshipped from November, 

 1824, to March, 1825." 



