172 THE WEDGWOODS. 



interest into the scale of Wedgwood's scheme, and in the end 

 the Act was, as I have said, obtained. 



Whitworth, to whose writings I have just alluded, pro- 

 posed, in order that the pack-horses and other rude modes of 

 conveyance might still be used, that " no main trunk of a 

 canal shall be carried nearer than four miles of any great 

 manufacturing and trading town ; which distance from the 

 canal," he says, " would be sufficient to maintain the same 

 number of horses as before." This narrow-minded policy, 

 as in later days has been the case in proposals for railways, 

 was adopted by some towns, and produced their gradual 

 decay and almost ruin. Happily for the pottery district, it 

 contained no " great manufacturing and trading towns," but 

 it possessed public spirit, energy, and perseverance centered 

 in the ever-active brain of Wedgwood and his able coadjutors, 

 and the consequence was that the canal was cut through its 

 very heart, and thus gave its vital trade-streams inlet and 

 outlet, which at once gave it strength, vigour, and nourish- 

 ment. 



It must be remembered that the generality of the people 

 living at that time at Burslem and its surrounding villages 

 were, partly through their isolated position, partly from the 

 want of schools, and partly, it must be confessed, from 

 an innate rudeness, many of them ignorant, low, and 

 brutish in their conduct ; but it must be remembered, also, 

 that it was not these people who opposed the march of im- 

 provement, but their "betters" in a worldly sense the 

 landowners, innkeepers, and the like. The commoner people, 

 the hardworkers, hailed the proposals with delight, and their 

 joy on the scheme being in a fair way of being successfully 

 carried out culminated in bonfires and other popular demon- 

 strations of satisfaction. 



In 1760 John Wesley had for the first time visited 

 Burslem, and in the following highly-interesting extract 

 from his journal he tells how ignorant the poor people there 

 were, and how on one occasion "a clod of earth" was 

 thrown at him while preaching ; but he also shows that the 



