304 FERRIES AND NAVIGABLE RIVERS. PART IV. 



but there they were stopped by the shallows, which it 

 was necessary to remove to enable them to reach Manches- 

 ter and the adjacent districts. Accordingly, in 1720, an 

 Act was obtained empowering certain persons to take 

 steps to make navigable the rivers Mersey and Irwell 

 from Liverpool to Manchester. This was effected by the 

 usual contrivance of wears, locks, and flushes, and a 

 considerable improvement in the navigation was thereby 

 effected. Acts were also obtained for the improvement 

 of the Weaver navigation, the Douglas navigation, and 

 the Sankey navigation, all in the same neighbourhood ; and 

 the works carried out proved of much service to the district. 

 But these improvements, it will be observed, were 

 principally confined to clearing out the channels of 

 existing rivers, and did not contemplate the making of 

 new and direct navigable cuts between important towns 

 or districts. It was not until about the middle of last 

 century that English enterprise was fairly awakened to 

 the necessity of carrying out a system of artificial canals 

 throughout the kingdom ; and from the time when canals 

 began to be made, it will be found that the industry 

 of the nation made a sudden start forward. Abroad, 

 monarchs had stimulated like undertakings, and drawn 

 largely on the public resources for the purpose of 

 carrying them into effect ; but in England such projects 

 are usually left to private enterprise, which follows 

 rather than anticipates the public wants. In the up- 

 shot, however, the English system, as it may be 

 termed which is the outgrowth in a great measure 

 of individual energy does riot prove the least efficient ; 

 for we shall find that the English canals, like the English 

 railways, were eventually executed with a skill, despatch, 

 and completeness, which imperial enterprise, backed by 

 the resources of great states, was unable to surpass or 

 even to equal. How the first English canals were made, 

 how they prospered, and how the system extended, will 

 appear from the following biography of James Brindley, 

 the father of canal engineering in England. 



