A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

To avoid serious delays either to raw materials or to manufactured articles the traders were often forced to resort to road transport "because," says Sandars, "speed and certainty as to delivery are of the first importance"; and he adds on this point, "Packages of goods sent from Manchester, for immediate shipment at Liverpool, often pay two or three pounds per ton; and yet there are those who assert that the difference of a few hours in speed can be no object. The merchants know better."

The example already set in so many different parts of the country in the provision of rail-ways, or railways, as they were now being generally called, may well have suggested that in a resort to this expedient would be found the most practical solution of the problem which had caused so much trouble to the traders. Sandars himself says that inasmuch as the two companies were "deaf to all remonstrances, to all entreaties," and were "actuated solely by a spirit of monopoly and extortion," the only remedy the public had left was to go to Parliament and ask for permission to establish a new line of conveyance—and one, also, that possessed decided advantages over canal or river transport.

But here there arose a consideration which had a material bearing on the problem immediately concerned, and was to affect the further development of the railway system in general.

Numerous as were the lines already existing at this time, none of them directly competed with the waterways. They were feeders rather than rivals of the canals. Even the Surrey Iron Rail-way and the Stockton and Darlington line, though operating independently of the canal companies, had not come into conflict with them. In the one instance—that of the Merthyr and Cardiff dram-road—in which a railway had hitherto been projected in direct competition with a canal the scheme had been either killed or bought off by the canal interests. But the proposed Liverpool and Manchester Railway was avowedly and expressly designed to compete with the existing water services. It was not simply to supplement the waterways. It threatened to supplant them.

So the waterway companies, representing very powerful interests—inasmuch as by 1824 the amount invested in canal and navigation schemes was about £14,000,000—might well think it necessary to take action in defence of their own position. Down to this time they had regarded the railway as either a friend or a non-competitor, and they had either extended to it a sympathetic support or had, at least, regarded it with a feeling of equanimity. Henceforward they had to look upon it as an opponent.

The project for a Liverpool and Manchester Railway would seem to have first begun to assume definite shape in or about 1822, when William James, a London engineer, who had already proposed a "Central Junction Rail-way or Tram-road" from Stratford-on-Avon to London, made surveys between Liverpool and Manchester, and prepared a set of plans. The certain prospect, however, of vigorous opposition from the waterway interests led some of the traders to think they had better make terms with the men in possession, if they could; and in that same year the corn merchants of Liverpool memorialised the Bridgewater trustees, asking both for a reduction in the rate of freight and for better accommodation. Bradshaw replied with an unqualified refusal, and he treated as idle talk the then much-discussed project of a line of railway.

There is no doubt that if, at this period, reasonable concessions had been made to the traders the building of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, although, of course, inevitable, would have been delayed to a later period. The traders shrank, at first, from an open fight, and the project of 1822 was allowed to drop for a time. The situation was found to be so hopeless, however, that in 1824 they decided that mere concessions from the waterway interests would no longer suffice, and that the provision of an alternative means of transport had become imperative. A Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company was now formed, and on October 29, 1824, there was issued a prospectus which was, in effect, a declaration of war against the waterway parties who had so mercilessly abused the situation they thought they controlled. This document, after mentioning that the total quantity of merchandise then passing between Liverpool and Manchester was estimated at 1000 tons a day, proceeded:—

"The committee are aware that it will not immediately be understood by the public how the proprietors of a railroad, requiring an invested capital of £400,000 can afford to carry goods at so great a reduction upon the charge of the present water companies. But the problem is easily solved. It is not that the water companies have not been able to carry goods on reasonable terms, but that, strong in the enjoyment of their monopoly, they have not thought proper to do so. Against the most arbitrary exactions the public have hitherto had no protection, and against the indefinite continuance or recurrence of the evil they have but one security. It is competition that is wanted, and the proof of this assertion may be adduced from the fact that shares in the Old Quay Navigation, of which the original cost was £70, have been sold as high as £1250 each!"

The canal interests in general had, however, anticipated the definite challenge thus given, and there had already been a call to arms in defence of common interests. In a postscript to the prospectus just referred to it was mentioned that the Leeds and Liverpool, the Birmingham, the Grand Trunk and other canal companies had issued circulars calling upon "every canal and navigation company in the Kingdom to oppose in limine, and by a united effort, the establishment of railroads wherever contemplated."[^[39]]

By this time, therefore, the projectors of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway were threatened with the opposition, not alone of the Bridgewater trustees and of the Old Quay Navigation trustees, but of the canal and river navigation interests throughout the country. As Thomas Baines well describes the position in his "History of Liverpool," "The canal proprietors, with an instinctive sense of danger, justly appreciated what they affected to despise, and, with one accord, and with one heart and mind, resolved to crush the rival project which threatened to interrupt, if not to destroy the hopes of prescription and the dreams of a sanguine avarice."