A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



salt and coal beds and to the potteries, and also its exceptional facilities for 

 communication by canals and other ways with the industrial district around 

 it. Not only did Liverpool feed Manchester with the raw material for 

 manufacture, but by means of its steam service the dried provisions and food 

 stuffs to supply the now teeming populations of the county were brought 

 from Ireland. Hitherto cattle had been supplied chiefly from the Craven 

 district ; now the import of live cattle from Ireland took the place of this 

 supply. The services of Liverpool to Lancashire in these respects were 

 enormous, nor can the vital importance of Liverpool in the development of 

 the Manchester cotton trade be over-emphasized. Even in the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries, as has been pointed out, the Manchester fustian trade 

 was largely dependent on the import of Irish yarn brought to Liverpool, and 

 for the expansion of the cotton trade at the opening of the nineteenth century 

 the co-operation of a great and friendly neighbouring port was even more 

 essential. The honours of Lancashire's greatness must always lie equally 

 divided between these cities ; it is hardly saying too much to affirm that 

 while Liverpool has been made prosperous by carrying the world commerce 

 of Manchester, Manchester in its turn could have had no such commerce if 

 Liverpool had not been at hand to carry it. 



But the plentiful importation of raw material and the rapid production 

 of cotton fabrics would have been comparatively useless unless accompanied 

 by an equal power of distribution. A pressing question at the close of the 

 eighteenth century, when bales of cotton were requisitioned from east and 

 west, and when the finished cotton goods of Lancashire were packed for 

 distant markets, was that of transport. 



The greatest hindrance to mediaeval exchange of commodities was the 

 difficulty of carriage ; of getting anything to anywhere. Lancashire was in 

 a remote corner of England, and though the ' packhorse on the down ' had 

 long been a useful and indispensable carrier of goods, its usefulness, like that 

 of the domestic spinning-wheel, was limited by strength and by numbers. 

 Obviously all the packhorses in England would soon not suffice to carry the 

 enormously increasing output of the Lancashire mills ; and even had they 

 sufficed, the cost of transport would have become almost prohibitive. 



Here, as before, ingenious minds were bent upon the problem, and as 

 before it was solved just when cheap or quick transport was most needed. 

 The first solution was the canal system of Lancashire, copied subsequently by 

 the rest of England. This lacework of canals was made possible by the close 

 neighbourhood of the various industrial centres to one another, and their 

 comparative proximity to Liverpool and the sea. 



The Bridgewater Canal,'" begun in 1758, arrived at completion just at 

 the time when the marvellous inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright were 

 multiplying the production of cotton goods. The ramifications of the canal 

 supplied cheap and easy water transport for heavy goods (and even for 

 passengers) between Manchester, Salford, Worsley, and Leigh, and most 

 important of all between Manchester and its then great and indispensable 

 seaport, Liverpool. The greatness of the scheme was only matched by its 

 complete success, and thus, as Mr. Ure pertinently remarks, was Lancashire 

 ' providentially supplied at a most critical period with a great arterial trunk 



"* For a detailed description of the canal see Baines, Hist, of Lanes, (ed. Harland, 1868), i, 334. 



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