sified the interest which had been created in the subject, and at length, in 1762, James Brindley, the prince of engineers, who had been employed in erecting wind flint-mills, cornmills, engines, &c., in the pot district, and who was successfully carrying out the duke's canal, was engaged to make the survey through Staffordshire. "The schemer," as he was aptly called, had, as early as 1758, made a rough survey of the district, and in the two succeeding years he continued his surveys and mastered the levels necessary on the proposed line of canal. Meetings in support of the proposed scheme were held, and Smeaton as well as Brindley produced their plans; but the project of inland water communication being in its entire infancy, and the duke's canal being unfinished, the projectors left their scheme in abeyance for some time, while they watched with intense anxiety the progress towards completion of the duke's canal. When it was opened, and its success became palpable, the Staffordshire scheme was revived with increased spirit. Wedgwood entered into it with all the ardour and energy of his nature; but at this time rival schemes, unthought of before, sprang up and had to be encountered. Brindley's project was wisely considered to be the plan for the district, and to this plan, which was also backed by the Duke of Bridgwater, Josiah Wedgwood gave his firm and lasting adhesion. of Brindley's letters, written on the 21st of December, 1765, shows how energetically Wedgwood worked in the promotion of this scheme, which became in the end one of the greatest blessings to the district which it ever enjoyed. The following is an extract :—

One

"On Tusdey Sr Georg sent Nuton in to Manchestr to make what intrest he could for Sir Georg and to gather ye old Navogtors togather to meet Sir Georg at Stoperd to make Head a ganst His grace. I sawe Doctor Seswige who sese Hee wants to see you aboat pamant of His Land in Cheshire. On Wednesday ther was not much transpired, but was so dark I could carse do aneything.

"On Thursday Wadgwood of Burslam came to Dunham and sant for mee and wee dined with Lord Gree & Sir Hare Mainwering and others. Sir Hare cud not ceep His Tamer. Mr. Wedgwood

came to seliset Lord Gree in faver of the Staffordshire Canal and stade at Mrs. Latoune all night & I whith him & on frydey sat out to wate on Mr. Edgerton to selesit Him. Hee sase Sparrow and others are indavering to gat ye Land owners consants from Hare Castle to Agden."

On the 30th of the same month (December, 1765) a meeting was held for the furtherance of the scheme, the lordlieutenant of the county presiding, and being supported by the county and borough members, and others of influence. At this meeting Brindley, in his quiet and simple manner, explained his plans, and having fully shown their feasibility, they were at once adopted, with only some trifling alterations. At this meeting it was determined to apply to Parliament for power to construct the canal, and the question of ways and means was fully discussed. Wedgwood took so prominent a part in the discussion, and was so warm in his support of the scheme, that the chairman, Earl Gower, asked him, it is said somewhat derisively, as he was so forward in pressing the scheme, what was he prepared to embark in it? To this Wedgwood immediately replied, that he would at once subscribe a thousand pounds towards the preliminary expenses and take, I know not how many, shares besides. This liberality, showing an honesty of purpose, and a strong faith in the project, became contagious, and put to the blush many milk-and-water supporters of the scheme who were present. Wedgwood's offer, it would seem, decided the matter; money enough was raised, an Act of Parliament was applied for, and by the middle of the ensuing year, 1766, obtained.

The inhabitants of Burslem and the neighbourhood were so much elated with the news of the result of the meeting, and so rejoiced at the spirit which Wedgwood and others had displayed, that the next evening following the meeting -the last day of the year 1765-they lit a huge bonfire in the town, and round it drank the healths of the promoters of the scheme.

In the preceding chapter I have alluded to the bad state

of the roads in the pottery district, and to the opposition which Wedgwood met in his laudable endeavours for their improvement. The same reason which induced him to promote the improvement of the roads actuated him in his labours to promote the canal. The transit of goods to and fro was heavy, and greatly impeded the rising trade of the county; and it became, in his expansive mind, a matter of absolute necessity that greater means of communication should be provided. As it was, the roads were scarcely passable even in summer to the lumbering old waggons and carts which occasionally jolted along them. They were narrow, with high banks at their sides, always, even in summer, soft and clayey, and full of deep ruts, in which the wheels sank and stuck fast. In winter, even the strings of pack-horses, which did somehow or other manage to drag their weary way along, knee-deep in mud, could scarcely get from place to place, and many a poor brute fell down exhausted, and died on the road, breaking, in falling, the heavy load of crockery it bore on its back.

It must be remembered that some of the essentials of the potter's art had to be brought on the backs of these packhorses, or by cart and waggon, from great distances, and that by the same means provisions had to be procured and pottery despatched. Although coal was plentiful on the spot, and the commoner clays abundant, flint, one of the essentials of fine wares, and of heavy carriage, had to be brought from the nearest point of water communication, which was at Willington in Derbyshire, to which place, having come by sea to Hull, it was brought up the river Trent. Clays from Cornwall, Devonshire, and Dorsetshire, had to be brought up in like manner from Bewdley, Bridgnorth, Winsford, Cavendish Bridge, and other places, to which it had been brought by water. In the same manner salt and lead had to be conveyed to the district; and thus the restrictions on trade were immense, and there was difficulty in procuring even the common necessaries of food and clothing. Shops, of course, there were none worthy of

the name in the pottery district, the people being supplied by itinerant hucksters, chapmen, and packmen from other places. In 1760, Richard Whitworth, of Balcham Grange, wrote:-"There are three pot waggons go from Newcastle and Burslem weekly, through Eccleshall and Newport to Bridgnorth, and carry about eight tons of potware every week, at £3 per ton. The same waggons load back with ten tons of close goods, consisting of white clay, grocery, and iron, at the same price, delivered on their road to Newcastle. Large quantities of potware are conveyed on horses' backs from Burslem and Newcastle to Bridgnorth and Bewdley, for exportation, about one hundred tons yearly, at £2 108. per ton. Two broad-wheel waggons (exclusive of 150 pack-horses) go from Manchester through Stafford weekly, and may be computed to carry 312 tons of cloth and Manchester wares in the year, at £3 10s. per ton. The great salt trade that is carried on at Northwich may be computed to send 600 tons yearly along this (proposed) canal, together with Nantwich 400, chiefly carried now on horses' backs at 10s. per ton on a medium." So accustomed, however, had the inhabitants of the principal pottery town, Newcastle-under-Lyme, become to this state of things that, as I have already hinted, every scheme for the improvement of the roads and for developing the resources of the district met with dogged and determined opposition. They, in their narrow-mindedness, feared that if the roads were improved, the country opened out with water and other means of communication, the traffic would be taken otherwise than through their good old town, and that therefore their innkeepers and others would lose by the proposed change.

The success of the duke's canal brought forward many opponents to the scheme to which Wedgwood had wedded himself. The promoters of each of these rival schemes had their own interests to serve, and their own selfish ends in view. They were, however, impotent except in delaying the Grand Trunk scheme, and eventually one by one were disposed of. The Duke of Bridgwater threw his influence and

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, proposed, 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 nourishment.

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 improvement, 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 demonstrations 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