Description:The letter above was written by James Loch in response to Bradshaw’s letter of the 25th. The letter reveals Loch’s concern over Bradshaw’s opposition to the railways. As Professor Eric Richards writes, Loch believed that canals needed to improve the facilities which they offered to the public if they were to compete with the railways.
Loch refers to a meeting with the civil engineer Thomas Telford (1757-1834) who was involved in engineering and advising on roads, bridges and railways in the early nineteenth century. Loch reports that Telford ‘had just come from Birmingham where he had been in order to approve some alterations and improvements which the Birmingham Canal Co. were about executing to meet the encreased demands of the Country’. Loch reveals that Thomas Telford shared his views concerning the necessary improvement of the canals. He writes that Telford had suggested that people involved with the Birmingham Canal Company felt ‘they had no case for the publick against the Railways unless they held out some facilities to the publick beyond that which they now professed’.
Loch refers to agreements being made concerning shares in canals and strategies being considered to enable canals to compete with railways. Towards the conclusion of his letter Loch attempts to persuade Bradshaw towards compromise. He writes ‘I find all my friends Railway made, it is beyond conception how universal it is’. He suggests that ‘the present agitation’ which existed amongst canal proprietors ‘arises from ill founded expectation & the skilful maneuvres of persons, who mean to profit by the rage’. Believing that there was a place in the market for both canals and railways, Loch writes that there was a ‘general demand for the additional means of transport which must be met in some way or other’.
For biographical information about Thomas Telford, see Roland Paxton, ‘Telford, Thomas (1757–1834)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27107]
For in-depth contextual analysis of correspondence relating to the development of inland transport during this period, see Professor Eric Richards The Leviathan of Wealth: The Sutherland Fortune in the Industrial Revolution (Routledge, 1973) which has formed the basis for interpretation of the letters featured here.