Yet even these roads and lanes seem to have been moving with the times, for we hear, in 1763, of one Daniel Morris introducing wagons and carts for the first time, and acting as carrier.[95] “Pot-wagons” now took crates of ware to Bewdley on the Severn and to Willington Ferry on the Trent. The general rate of transport was 9s. per ton for 10 miles. To the port of Liverpool the rate was 28s. per ton, but flint and clay up from Liverpool cost only 15s. a ton.[96] To Willington the charge was 35s. a ton; and the transit down the river to Hull was almost as expensive.
The Duke of Bridgewater was at this time developing his estates in Cheshire by means of the great Bridgewater Canal. In 1761 it was open from Manchester to Worsley, and James Brindley, “the schemer,” was engaged in extending it to tide-water below Warrington. Brindley was already well known in the Potteries. He was born in the High Peak in 1716, and after serving his apprenticeship as a mill-wright at Macclesfield, and designing many improvements in spinning factories and mine drainage, he settled more or less in the Potteries. In or about 1758 he put up a windmill for grinding calcined flint on an estate called the Jenkins, near Burslem, belonging to John Wedgwood of the Big House; and many other pieces of engineering for the convenience of potters were invented by him. But in 1759 he commenced, under the Duke of Bridgewater, those 365 miles of canal which made his name famous.[97]
Acting under the orders of Lord Gower and Lord Anson, Brindley had, in 1758, made a preliminary survey for a canal to connect the Trent and Mersey. The success of the Bridgewater canal caused this project to be revived in 1764, and an association was formed to obtain Parliamentary powers. In December of that year a meeting was held at Lichfield between Lord Gower and others, at which they discussed the conflicting interests of the proprietors, the landlords, the manufacturers and the public.[98] The scheme was dropped for that session, but all through 1765 Wedgwood, who saw the prime importance of this new method of transport, was engaging support, combating the opposition of rival interests, and getting Bentley to issue pamphlet after pamphlet showing all its advantages.
At last, on May 14, 1766, the Bill received the Royal Assent. On June 3, a meeting of the proprietors was held, presided over by Lord Gower. There were present Lord Grey, Mr Bagot, Mr Anson, Mr Gilbert, Mr Smith of Fenton, Mr Sam. Robinson and others. A committee was formed and the following officers appointed:
| “James Brindley, Surveyor General, | £200 | per ann. |
| Hugh Henshall, Clerk of the works, | £150 | ” |
| T. Sparrow, Clerk to the proprietors, | £100 | ” |
| Jos. Wedgwood, Treasurer, | £000 | ” |
out of which he bears his own expenses, and it was ordered that the work be begun on immediately, both sides of Harecastle and at Wilden.”[99]
The first sod was cut by Wedgwood on July 26 at Brownhills, between Burslem and Tunstall, before a great concourse of people, and we are told that an ox was roasted whole for the populace.[100]
The Trent and Mersey canal is 93 miles long, with 75 locks, and rises at the Harecastle tunnel to a height of 326 feet above the Mersey. It is 20 feet broad at the top, 16 feet at the bottom, and 4 feet 6 inches deep, and it cost £300,000.[101] It is carried on aqueducts over the Dove, Trent and Dane, and there are five tunnels. It was pushed on by Brindley with great energy till his death, and completed at last in 1777 by Hugh Henshall, his son-in-law, together with a branch to the Severn from Great Haywood. Brindley died at Turnhurst in Wolstanton on Sept. 27, 1772. In 1786 we read that freight for general goods on the canal was 1¼d. per ton per mile, or less than one-seventh what freight cost before the canal was cut.[102] At the same time the £200 shares in the canal were standing at £600-£700 apiece.[103] It was carrying over 1,350,000 tons of goods and minerals a year in 1849, when it was bought out by the railway company for £1,170,000.
A fresh development of the potting industry took place even while this canal was building. China clay and china stone were discovered by Cookworthy in Cornwall. This was in 1768, and Cookworthy took out a patent for the use of these materials. He never succeeded in producing porcelain on a commercial scale, and in 1773 sold his patent rights to Richard Champion.[104] Mr Champion was one of the chief supporters in Bristol of Edmund Burke, member for that city, and conceived in 1775 the idea of getting with his aid a Bill passed through Parliament to extend the patent which he had bought from Cookworthy for a further seven years. But china clay and china stone had during these last few years been proved of value not only for making china, but also as a constituent of the clay body used for making the cream-coloured earthenware of Staffordshire. It had been imported and used by Wedgwood, Turner of Lane End, the Warburtons and others, and an extension of Cookworthy’s patent, giving to Champion of Bristol the monopoly for seven more years of the right to use this material, whether for making china or earthenware, was naturally resisted by the earth potters of Staffordshire. In this opposition Wedgwood and Turner took a leading part; and their action has been criticized by many who thought they saw in Champion the struggling inventor penalized by pushing capitalists. From another and as reasonable a point of view Champion was a speculator who tried to use political influence to increase the value of a monopoly that he had bought on a different basis. As Mr Burton says, “It certainly seems that the fullest justice was done when Champion was allowed an extension of the patent for the use of china clay and china stone in porcelain, the only substance ever produced by Cookworthy or Champion, and the other potters were allowed to use the same materials in earthenware bodies.”[105]
