236 History of Inland Transport 



the Leeds and Liverpool, the Birmingham, the Grand Trunk 

 and other canal companies had issued circulars calling upon 

 " every canal and navigation company in the Kingdom to 

 oppose in limine, and by a united effort, the establishment 

 of railroads wherever contemplated." 1 



By this time, therefore, the projectors of the Liverpool 

 and Manchester Railway were threatened with the opposition, 

 not alone of the Bridgewater trustees and of the Old Quay 

 Navigation trustees, but of the canal and river navigation 

 interests throughout the country. As Thomas Baines well 

 describes the position in his " History of Liverpool," " The 

 canal proprietors, with an instinctive sense of danger, justly 

 appreciated what they affected to despise, and, with one 

 accord, and with one heart and mind, resolved to crush the 

 rival project which threatened to interrupt, if not to destroy 

 the hopes of prescription and the dreams of a sanguine 

 avarice." 



The real strength of the opposition thus being worked up 

 against not only the Liverpool and Manchester Railway but 

 public railways in general will be better understood if I 

 supplement the references I have already made to the shares 

 of canal and navigation companies by a few further figures, 

 showing the financial position to which the waterways had 

 attained, and the extent of the vested interests they repre- 

 sented at the particular period now in question. 



In a pamphlet published in 1824, under the title of " A 

 Statement of the Claim of the Subscribers to the Birmingham 

 and Liverpool Rail-road to an Act of Parliament ; in reply 

 to the Opposition of the Canal Companies " (quoted in the 

 fifth, or 1825, edition of Thomas Gray's " Observations on a 

 General Iron Rail- way "), it is stated that the amount of 

 capital originally subscribed for the old Birmingham Canal 

 Company was about ^55,000, in shares of ^100, subject to a 

 stipulation that no one person should hold more than ten 

 shares. The pamphlet proceeds : 



1 That this attitude of organised hostility on the part of the canal com- 

 panies was well maintained is shown by the following extract from the 

 " Manchester Advertiser" of January 30, 1836 : "The proprietors of the 

 Ayre and Calder navigation and of the Canals, have resolved to organise 

 an opposition to all railways whatever in Parliament. The canal pro- 

 prietors are thus openly setting themselves in opposition to one of the 

 greatest improvements of the age. " 



