IX. mtlNm.KVS I, AST CANALS. n;i 



no petty jealousy of rivals. His pupils had free access 

 to all liis methods, ami lie took a pride in so training 

 then i that they should he an honour to the profession 

 tli'n rising into importance, and enabled, after he had 

 left the scene, to carry on those great industrial under- 

 takings, which h r j >rohahly foresaw clearly enough in the 

 future of England. 



Before dismissing the subject of Brindley's canals, we 

 may briefly allude to the influence which they exercised 

 upon the enterprise as well as the speculation of the time. 

 " When these fellows," says Sheridan in the ' Critic,' 

 "have once got hold of a good thing, they do not know 

 when to stop." This might be said of the speculative 

 projectors of canals, as afterwards of railways. The 

 commercial success which followed the opening of the 

 Duke's Canal, and shortly after it the Grand Trunk, 

 soon infected the whole country, and canal schemes 

 were projected in great numbers for the accommodation 

 even of the most remote and unlikely places. In those 

 districts where the demand for improved water-communi- 

 cation grew out of an actual necessity as, for instance, 

 where a large coal-field required to be opened up for the 

 supply of a population urgently in need of fuel or 

 where two large towns, such as Manchester and Liver- 

 pool, required to be provided with a more cheap and 

 convenient means of trading intercourse than had for- 

 merly existed or where districts carrying on extensive 

 and various manufactures, such as Birmingham, Wolver- 

 hampton, and the Potteries, needed a more ready means 

 of communication with other parts of the kingdom there 

 was no want of trade for the canals ; and those constructed 

 for such purposes very soon had as much traffic as they 

 could carry. The owners of land discovered that their 

 breed of horses was not destroyed, and that their estates 

 were not so cut up as to be rendered useless, as many of 

 them had prognosticated. On the contra rv. the demand 



