The Railway Era 239 



the period so arranged. In some years, it is said, no tolls 

 were paid for six months at a time. This practice was found 

 preferable, for certain members of the managing committee 

 ironmasters or large traders in the district to a reduction of 

 tolls to be in force throughout the year, their practice being 

 to keep back their own consignments, whenever possible, 

 till the free period, which they could fix to suit their con- 

 venience. When the principal shareholders were traders 

 using the canal, it did not matter to them whether their 

 profits came wholly in dividends or partly in dividends and 

 partly in free carriage. Traders, however, who could not 

 wait for their supplies or store their manufactured goods until 

 the free period came round had to pay the full rates of tolls 

 for, at least, the period during which these were enforced. 



I shall refer later to the effect on railway legislation of the 

 power and influence to which the waterways had attained. 

 The consideration for the moment is that, even allowing for 

 a certain number of minor or of purely speculative canals 

 which were admittedly failures, the waterway interests, con- 

 solidating their forces, were able, by virtue of their position 

 at the time in question, to organise a powerful and wide- 

 spread opposition to a rival form of transport then still in its 

 infancy, though obviously capable of eventually becoming a 

 formidable competitor. 



The canal interests also made every effort to work up an 

 opposition on the part of representatives of the landed interests, 

 who, however, developed such strong hostility of their own 

 towards the iron road that the arguments of the canal pro- 

 prietors were hardly needed to arouse them to violent antagon- 

 ism to they^Jieme. Popular prejudices, too, were well ex- 

 ploited, ana the most direful predictions were indulged in 

 as to what would result from the running of locomotives, so 

 that, for a time, the promoters even abandoned the idea of 

 using locomotives at all. 



The combined canal and land interests scored the first 

 victory on the Liverpool and Manchester Bill, which was 

 thrown out in 1825 ; but it was reintroduced and passed in 

 1826, the opposition of the Bridgewater trustees having, in 

 the meantime, been overcome by a judicious presentation to 

 them of a thousand shares in the railway. 



The promoters thus established the new principle of direct 



