Liverpool and Manchester was about 40 tons per week, or 2,000 tons per year, and the rate of carriage was 1/- per ton mile. For 1890—three years before the Manchester Ship Canal was opened—it was estimated that the traffic was not less than 10,000,000 tons, and the cost of transit from 3/- to 8/- per ton for the whole distance.[1]
Developed transport increased Exports.Similarly our Export Trade was of a most restricted nature before the development of inland navigation, but with its progress the facilities for transit were greatly improved, and the exports of Great Britain soon increased to much greater proportions. This was noticed in one of the finest orations of Edmund Burke who thus describes the growth of our exports to the Colonies, which had then reached the value of £6,000,000:—
"When we speak of the [increase of] commerce with our Colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren."[2]
It is true that Canals did not complete this revolution, but they undoubtedly were important factors in its accomplishment, seeing that from the year 1760, when the canal system effectually began, to the year 1838, when the canal period closed with the advent of railways, the export trade of the country advanced in value from £14,000,000 to £50,000,000 per annum.
- ↑ Jeans—Waterways, p. 42.
- ↑ Present State of the Nation. Bohn's Series.
