INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS 535 
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a more favourable view of the situation, and Messrs Child, ADJ 
by successive advances which amounted in all to £25,000, 
enabléd him to complete this second undertaking. 
Brindley was next employed upon the Grand Junction and the 
canal, which was eagerly promoted by the Wedgwoods. For ra 
certain branches of the pottery manufacture, materials were Jirciom 
required which had to be brought considerable distances— eagerly ’. 
flints from the Eastern Counties and clay from Devonshire 
and Cornwall? Several of the leading proprietors in Cheshire 
and Staffordshire were eager to carry out a scheme for 
opening up their estates by making a water-way, which 
should start from the Duke's canal near Runcorn on 
the Mersey, and connect with the Trent at Wilne, near 
Derby, and also with the Severn at Stourport. It more than 
realised the most sanguine expectations, as it reduced the 
cost of cartiage to about one-fourth of what it had beens. 
Cheshire salt could be manufactured on a much larger scale, 
and the Potteries benefited enormously, not only by the 
improved means of obtaining materials, but by the increased 
facilities for the safe transport of brittle wares. 
The development of internal navigation was of immense 
importance to manufactures of every kind¢, but it also gave The roads 
an incentive to agricultural improvement; it was possible to Lm 
convey produce to more distant and better markets®. This kad ben 
kind of advantage accrued, in an even greater degree,/all ino 
isrepair 
through successful efforts to rescue the roads of the country 
from the frightful state of disrepair into which they had 
been allowed to fall in the later middle ages. Till the 
time of Philip and Mary, the maintenance of the roads had 
been for the most part a matter of private benevolence, and 
during the fifteenth and sixfeenth centuries, they appear 
to have decayed. In the time of Philip and Mary, parish 
surveyors® were instituted, whose business it was to enforce 
the necessary labour from each parish. The justices had 
pewer to punish the neglect of surveyors and to assess the 
t Smiles, op. cit. 1. 398. 2 Id., op. cst. 1. 425. 3 Id., op. cit. 1. 447. 
4 Whitworth (op. cit. p. 86) gives an interesting account of the local manu- 
factures which would benefit by his proposed canal. 8 Id., op. cit. p. 81. 
8 2 and 8 Philip and Mary, ¢. 8. The Bedfordshire Quarter Sessions Records, 
1650—1660 have frequent complaints of parishes not appointing surveyors. See 
11so Atkinson, Yorkshire Quarter Sessions Records.