To Parliament
It is the unanimous opinion of this assembly, that the success of the Act for establishing this Navigation hath been greatly owing to the warm and effectual support derived from the Right Honourable, the Earl of Hertford and his family in the several stages of the Bill through both Houses of Parliament.
Coventry Canal Minute Book, 19 February 1768
No matter how energetic the industrialist might be in campaigning for canals, or how enthusiastically the pamphleteer might sing out the praises of navigations when it came to the crucial stage of getting the Bill through Parliament, there was no substitute for the ‘warm and effectual’ support of a Right Honourable Member.
Parliament, throughout the eighteenth century, was a small, enclosed world with a membership drawn from a very narrow social band – to achieve any kind of success, it was necessary to know someone of influence, someone who could preferably call on a wide range of family connections within the two houses. Canal promoters such as Josiah Wedgwood might exert influence within their own communities, but they were without any direct access to political power. This was still the age when a Member of Parliament sat for what William Cobbett called the ‘accursed hill’ of Old Sarum, while a thriving manufacturing town like Birmingham was without any representation at all. So the business of obtaining a Canal Act was partly a matter of arguing a case, and partly a matter of obtaining the right sort of support.
The Duke of Bridgewater, as a member of the aristocracy himself, had less of a problem than some of his successors. But, as the first in the line of canal promoters, he found that he had a great deal of explanation to provide on the general principles and practices of canal construction. Before being brought to a vote in the two Houses, the plan for the canal extension to the Mersey had to be explained in detail to the members of the special Committee of the House of Commons set up to examine the proposals. James Brindley, the duke’s engineer, was called in to provide the answers to the technical questions. Very few Committee sessions in the House of Commons can have been livelier than those involving James Brindley and his illustrated lectures on canals.
Brindley was no scholar, in fact he was almost illiterate, but he had a practical man’s gift for practical exposition. If the Committee wanted to know how a canal could be made watertight, then to Brindley the only sensible thing to do was to send out for clay and water and give a practical demonstration of the art of ‘puddling’. When a bridge had to be described, Brindley preferred a demonstration that involved carving up a cheese with his pocket knife to oral reasoning. Whenever he got stuck for words, he would take out his piece of chalk, get down on his hands and knees, and draw diagrams on the floor of the committee room. It was apparently a popular saying in Lancashire at that time that ‘Brindley and chalk would go through the world’.1 He certainly went through the Parliamentary Committee with a rare abandon.
The opposition to the duke’s plans was headed in Parliament by Lord Strange, a Lancashire man who acted as spokesman for the Navigation interests. He was a Tory, and the opposing forces tended to split along party lines, the Tories supporting Lord Strange, the Whigs usually supporting the Duke of Bridgewater. Brindley followed the debate with keen interest, and recorded his impressions of its progress. At first he felt gloomy and apprehensive as the opposition case was put; ‘The Toores mad had agane ye Duk’ [the Tories made head against the duke], but he became more optimistic as the petitions supporting the duke began to flood into Parliament and, finally, he was able to triumphantly record, ‘Lord Strange defetted!’ The Bill received the Royal Assent on 4 March 1762.
The Duke of Bridgewater’s and the other early canal bills were infrequent interruptions to Parliamentary business – trivial matters compared with the problems of international affairs, particularly when a minor disturbance in the colonies suddenly turned itself into the American War of Independence. But for the protagonists, canal bills were major preoccupations. When Parliament was petitioned to pass the Trent and Mersey Bill, Wedgwood had to write to his friend Bentley:
‘Pray put your business into such a channel, as it will move with the assistance of your good partner for a few months, for I am afraid in that time you will not be able to follow it much yourself.’
Eliza Meteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 1865
In fact the Bill did not take quite that long, but some canal bills did, and the promoters always had to face the prospect of a series of deferments.
The American War of Independence ended and commercial confidence began to be restored following the collapse of the disastrous administration of Lord North in 1783 and its replacement, in 1784, by a new Government headed by the young William Pitt. Parliament, in its turn, found canal business occupying more and more of its time. By the 1790s canal enthusiasm had grown into Canal Mania: ‘One Hon. Member wished his grand-children might be born webb-footed that they might be able to swim in water, for there would not be a bit of dry land in this island to walk upon.’2
Faced by the growing number of canal bills being presented, Parliament tried to bring some order to the chaotic scene by means of a special set of Standing Orders, which were introduced in 1792. The Orders laid down that all canal proposals should be advertised in the London Gazette and local papers before presentation to Parliament, that a map should be deposited with the local Clerk of the Peace, that proper costings should be worked out, and that lists of landlords, assenting and dissenting, who had property along the proposed route, should be made. It was also ordered, somewhat optimistically, that bills should contain provisions for ensuring that subscribers paid up on demand. Even with the new, stricter rules, the number of canal schemes continued to grow. 1793 was the peak year. At the beginning of the year, a writer in The Times wrote that: ‘The Canal Bills so multiply, and the petitions for and against them so increase, that they promise to be as tedious a business as the Trial of Mr Hastings.’3 By March, there were no less than thirty-six canal bills under the consideration of Parliament, and nineteen received the Royal Assent during the year. Inevitably, there was a drop in subsequent years, and by the time the Napoleonic Wars had begun, the number had fallen right away.
The canal company seals often give an idea of the ideas they were attempting to promote. The Stourbridge Canal seal shows (above) a rather glum industrial scene in the rain, with a steam pumping engine at a colliery. The Staffordshire & Worcestershire shows a sunnier scene with an unlikely high-masted boat – clearly designed before the canal was actually built. (British Waterways)
The discussion of the canal bills of the 1790s was a very different matter from the chalk and cheese lectures of Brindley. Arguments were taken away from the laymen and handed over to the lawyers, as all parties became more expert and the arguments more complex. Where a few witnesses used to be called, they now came in crowds – The Times reported that almost 200 witnesses were brought up to London for the Birmingham Canal Bill of 1791. All those petitions that had been so assiduously canvassed by the promoters and opponents came thudding down on to the table in Parliament by the score. And it was not just the number of petitions that increased:
‘A petition from Birmingham, in favour of the Worcester and Birmingham canal, was yesterday presented by Sir George Shuckburgh to the House of Commons, which, from its singularity, deserves notice; being signed by 4058 persons, and the petition measured in length above fourteen yards.’
Leeds Intelligencer, 15 March 1791
When an important argument blew up, as in the case of the Bilston Canal Act, the unfortunate Members who formed the Committee set up to study the proposals almost disappeared under the avalanche of papers. Petitions from local towns, both for and against, were presented, local big-wigs sent their views of the matter, local tradesmen sent theirs. Some petitioners caused confusion by changing their minds, and sending in two petitions, as did the citizens of Stafford. The proprietors of the Birmingham Canal put the finishing touch to their pleas of the hardship that would be caused to their subscribers, by a tear-jerking document from a selection of the shareholders headed A Petition of many Widows and Orphans.4
The increased professionalism of the advocates meant that each canal bill tended to take up more of the House’s time than ever. When the Dudley Bill went into Committee in the House of Lords, it was debated for twenty-three days, with a division almost every day. When the debate reached the floor of the House, it attracted a great deal of attention: ‘This Dudley Canal Bill has some secret charm to draw their Lordship’s attention.’ It was also the scene of a rather forlorn rearguard action by a representative of the diminishing minority who still opposed the whole concept of canal navigation. Lord Portchester ‘entered into a long dissertation of its demerits… He combated the generality of Canal Bills, considering them as a very great evil, and compared them to an act of national justice, such as a war of public necessity, wherein a number of privateers took advantage of the occasion and attacked private property.’5
But however important these debates might be, very little reached the pages of the newspapers. The Times comment was typical: ‘A long debate took place on the Dudley Canal Bill, which lasted from four until nearly eight o’clock. The arguments pro and con would be uninteresting to the public, and therefore we shall not detail them.’
In one sense they were right, for the most important and interesting part of the Parliamentary battle took place outside the walls of Westminster. This was the fight to win over the vital interests to one side or the other – and it was fought by accountants rather than lawyers.
During the end of 1792 and early 1793, the Lancaster Canal Company became engaged in a feud with the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Company. Basically, the argument arose because the Leeds & Liverpool Company wanted to deviate from their approved line, but this deviation would have brought their canal into the area set aside for the southern end of the Lancaster. The specific details of the quarrel are less important than the lines along which it developed.
The first sign of dirty dealings was spotted by the Lancaster Company in August 1792:
‘The Committee have been informed from Lord Balcarres & others, [that] it is industriously propagated that the Line on the South Side of Ribble is not meant to be carried into execution.
We apprehend these reports are spread by the Agents, of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in order to gain the assent of the Land Owners to their projected Deviation.’
Lancaster Canal Letter Book, 22 August 1792
They sent off a warning note to ‘their’ Member of Parliament:
‘The Canal Come take the liberty of requesting you will desire your friends in Parliament not to be too hasty in engaging their interest to the Leeds & Liverpool Proprietors, as we do not yet know the effect their scheme may have upon our Canal.’
Lancaster Canal Letter Book, 4 November 1792
The Lancaster Canal next became interested in the activities of a Mr E. Gorst who had been heard to refer to them as ‘narrow minded men and blind to their own interest’, so that when they also heard that Mr Gorst was travelling around their part of Lancashire, collecting signatures for a petition for ‘a general junction of the Canals in this Country’ they concluded that ‘Mr Gorst under a false pretence of gaining a Petition for a General Junction is merely serving the interest of the Bolton extension of the Leeds & Liverpool.’6
Things were clearly moving towards a direct confrontation of the two parties and the Lancaster Proprietors began to organise their Parliamentary forces. They began by reassuring their more important supporters within Parliament: a letter was sent to the Earl of Derby refuting ‘the Bugbear held out by the L & L to alarm our proprietors and poison the minds of individuals who were our friends when we Solicited our Bill last Sessions.’7 The Company’s solicitor, Mr Jackson Mason, was sent down to London to keep an eye on things, but he was a gloomy man and soon found that Parliamentary intrigues depressed him: he was, he reported to the Lancaster Committee, ‘in the cellar’. He even began to have doubts about the loyalty of Lord Balcarres, who was one of the leading spokesmen for the Lancaster interest. The Committee knew how to cope with that:
‘I do not see why you should doubt his Lordship’s Integrity – but if they should propose something very advantageous to his Lordship & you should find him begin to Waiver, it may be well to drop a hint to him that should he permit the L & L to succeed it may be necessary for us to consider whether a lower level could not be carried.’
Lancaster Canal Letter Book, 2 May 1793
This last threat was quite simply economic blackmail. The Lancaster Company had an agreement with Lord Balcarres to drain his extensive coal mines in the area to supply the water for the canal – they were now reminding his Lordship that such an advantageous scheme was, of course, dependent on his Lordship’s continuing political support. The ‘warm and effectual’ support of Right Honourable Members had to be kept up to the mark. On this occasion, the Lancaster Canal’s supporters were successful in getting the Leeds & Liverpool plans thrown out, but the next year they were back, and the political and financial bargaining began all over again. One important landowner with political influence could be relied on to support the Lancaster Company because, as they reminded him, he could expect better coal sales from their canal that ‘goes thro’ a Country of a great extent that has not a coal within itself.’8 Another would support the Leeds & Liverpool: ‘Lord Petre is most certainly deeply interested in their success, and exerts himself much. He told me last Spring that it would be 8 or 900 a year in his way if they succeeded.’9
As well as indulging in what, to modern eyes, seem extraordinarily open exercises in bribery and corruption, the two companies also engaged in a variety of purely political ploys and manoeuvres. The Lancaster Company, for example, proposed a whole set of new clauses for the Leeds & Liverpool Bill – clauses which they knew were completely unacceptable, and which were designed purely to waste the opposition’s time and, hopefully, to antagonise some of the Leeds and Liverpool supporters, who might be fooled into thinking that the Lancaster company were trying to be helpful. Then, in March, the two companies gave up their bickering, agreed on a compromise solution, and, after two years of insults and double-dealing, declared themselves the best of friends.
All this juggling of political and financial interests was exceedingly complicated, and both Parliamentarians and Canal Proprietors had to be very careful not to upset the delicate balances. When the Grand Junction Canal Company was going to Parliament, they naturally sought the support of other canal companies, including the Lancaster. Since these two canals were at opposite ends of the country, there was no possibility of any conflict of economic interest. But, before agreeing, the Lancaster Committee had to check with their Parliamentary supporters to see how such a move would fit into the political pattern:
‘The Committee have received a letter from the Grand Junction Canal to send petitions from their Comp., the Corporation and the Town in their favour – we wish to know your Sentiments of the Grand Junction Interest, and if our sending petitions in their favour will in any wise benefit them, or if any of our friends are in opposition to them.’
Lancaster Canal Letter Book, 18 December 1792
Even when economic considerations were plain, a company might have to modify its plans if it appeared to be politically expedient. In an earlier conflict between the Lancaster and the Leeds & Liverpool Companies, the Leeds proprietors were raising objections to the former’s plans. They received private information, however, that their opposition was putting them in bad odour with the Speaker of the House, who was against it ‘in principle’ and considered the particular form of the opposition to be ‘without precedent’.10 The Leeds & Liverpool took the hint and dropped out of the contest. As it turned out, things went well for the Leeds & Liverpool on this occasion, as their opposition had the effect of panicking the Lancaster Proprietors, who rushed their bill forward with ‘many imperfections’, and the Leeds and Liverpool found themselves with legitimate opportunities for opposition.
It was not only the canal companies who were able to exert pressure. Local interests could gain considerable concessions in payment for their political support:
‘The water communication with London and Bristol effected by means of the Canal in question [Kennet and Avon] has proved to be the occasion of no small advantage to the commerce of Devizes. A very considerable additional outlay in the cost of that undertaking was incurred by bringing it so close to this town, owing to the rapidity of the ascent which it is made to surmount in order to gain the high ground just at this particular spot; whereas the attainment of the same level might have been accomplished by pursuing a line of much more gradual aclivity. Whatever may have turned out to be the result of this arrangement, whether to the interest of the shareholders on the one hand, or those of Devizes on the other, it is not generally known that the Corporation of the town, through the influence of their representatives in Parliament, were the main instruments of bringing it about.’11
The detour, in fact, involved the company in the construction of one of the most spectacular flights of locks in Britain – a feature which has brought more pleasure to later canal enthusiasts than it did to the Kennet & Avon’s shareholders.
The Parliamentary intrigues of the eighteenth century would have taxed the ingenuity of a Machiavelli, so it is hardly surprising that many canal bills were never passed, and that many others only got through on the second or third attempt. The acts that were finally agreed reflect, in their various clauses, the conflict of interests that preceded their acceptance.
The Dudley Canal, with its labyrinth of tunnels, was only approved after lengthy debates in Parliament. (Birmingham Reference Library)
The main part of any Canal Act was concerned with defining the line the canal was to take (usually referred to as ‘the Parliamentary line’, deviations from which required separate authorisation from Parliament), confirming the estimated costs of construction and authorising the necessary capital, and regulating the tolls and tonnage to be charged when the canal was completed. Procedures were also laid down for the purchase of land along the route, including the compulsory purchase powers of the canal proprietors, and the composition of the various bodies that had to be set up to adjudicate between the different parties where agreement could not be reached. These main clauses became fairly standardised as time went on – it is the special clauses, introduced to define the position on some particular issue, that show where the real hard bargaining had gone on.
The mill owners were one group who sent in petitions objecting to virtually every canal scheme that came before Parliament, and always in much the same terms. The canal would bring ruin on them by ‘intercepting several Streams and Currents of Water, which at present communicate with and run into, the River Thame, whereby the Water (already insufficient for the supply and working of several Mills upon the said River) will be considerably diminished.’12 Substitute the name of any river for ‘Thame’ and you have the all-purpose millowners’ petition: canals, to them, were always a menace, just as their own water supplies were always already insufficient. Sometimes their opposition was so effective that they could get a canal bill held up for years. The Rochdale Canal plans were first put before Parliament in 1791, but the bill was delayed until 1794 and then was passed only when the company agreed to build special reservoirs to protect the water supply to the mills. In most cases, however, the mill owners were satisfied with getting suitable safeguards written into the act, such as the clause in the Trent and Mersey Navigation Bill ‘for preventing injury or damage to the Owners and Occupiers of Mills upon the River Churnett, and other Persons interested in the Water of the said River, or the Streams and Waters flowing into the same.’
Sometimes specific properties were protected: Mr X’s orchard must not be disturbed; Mr Y’s view must be unobstructed. Farmers along a canal route would often receive special benefits, apart from the benefit of irrigation; many bills, for example, contained provision for manure to be carried on the canal free of tonnage. Some canal companies even anticipated the later popularity of the canals for pleasure boating by permitting anyone whose property adjoined the waterway to use it for nothing – subject to a few provisos. The Leicester Navigation Act of 1791, for example, allowed free access provided no locks were passed, no cargo was carried and the pleasure boaters kept out of everybody else’s way. In other words, the waterway was free as long as its use cost the company nothing in terms of lost water or revenue.
The job of getting a Canal Act passed, of reconciling opposing interests, was a long and tedious one. It was also expensive. There was usually at least one full-time Company man employed in Westminster to marshal the forces, there were the lawyers’ fees to be met, witnesses’ expenses to be paid and palms to be greased (the Duke of Bridgewater’s accounts, for example, contain suspiciously vague entries headed ‘Mr Bill’). It is not surprising that after the expenditure of so much time, effort and hard cash, the actual passing of a bill should be an occasion for general celebrations. Local poets did their worst and there was a great deal of revelry and mutual congratulations. When the Trent & Mersey Act was approved, it was marked by a ceremony on 26 July 1766 in which Josiah Wedgwood cut the first sod of earth, after which there were ‘some excellent speeches, in which, like veterans, the promoters of the scheme recounted their toils and dangers in the battle won.’13
The veterans had earned their congratulations. But, having got authority to build a canal, they still had to find the money to pay for it.