xvi THE FOOD OF THE PEOPLE 231 



an enthusiast for England's waterways. He was a minister 

 among the Friends and an estimable man. A frequent 

 guest at Fothergill's table, where his talk was ever of 

 canals, he took counsel with the doctor, who saw how 

 greatly, in those pre-railway days, the community would 

 be helped by fuller facilities for the transit of merchandise. 

 Fothergill had a plan of his own for bringing new canals 

 to London to a grand reservoir in Cold Bath Fields, in 

 order to link up that city with the northern system. In 

 the depressed times his efforts led to no present success. 

 The unwearied perseverance of Hustler had, however, a 

 better result, for he lived to see in 1777 his pet project 

 realised, when the German Ocean and the Irish Sea were 

 connected by the great Leeds and Liverpool Canal. 1 



REFORM OF LONDON 



Fothergill was a Londoner during almost the whole of his 

 adult life, and had a high regard for the rights and duties 

 of citizenship such an association of men as Aristotle 

 puts in the forefront of his treatise on Politics. London 

 was already a great city of 750,000 souls, and a centre of 

 commerce, as the " sister city of Westminster " was the 

 seat of arts and of government. Fothergill spent a large 

 portion of each day in travelling from one part to another 

 of the metropolis, and of the country around it. The 

 streets were narrow, ill-lit, ill-paved, ill-cleansed, according 

 to modern ideas ; some thoroughfares which in our day 

 are filled with shops and offices for example, Cheapside 

 and Mark Lane then contained the residences of wealthy 

 merchants, and gardens with fountains and pleasant 

 retreats were found where numerous floors of crowded 

 warehouses now occupy every foot of ground. Like his 

 friend Franklin, by whose inventive genius and alert 

 energy Philadelphia came to be one of the best ordered 

 cities in the world, Fothergill was ever on the watch to 

 remedy the abuses and supply the needs of his own town. 



1 Works, iii. p. cvi ; Hird, Affectionate Tribute ; MS. Diary of Betty 

 Fothergill ; Mem. S. Fothergill, p. 500 n. ; Diet. Nat. Biog. Hustler died in 

 1790, aged seventy-five years. 



