Description:Earl Gower’s papers also include printed copies of numerous Parliamentary acts relating to the construction of Canals made under the authority of King George III. These papers include an Act relating to the proposed canal between the River Trent and the River Mersey. The Act outlines the contemporary perceptions of the advantages of canals.
The Act suggests that the canal, to be used for ‘the Navigation of boats and other vessels with heavy burdens’, would ‘open an easy communication between the interior parts of the kingdom and the ports of Hull and Liverpool’. The act also states that the proposed canal ‘will be of great advantage’ to ‘the trade carried on to and from the said two ports’ and also to ‘several different Manufactories which abound in many Towns or Places’ near to the canal.
In addition, the document estimates that the new canal will ‘also tend to the improvement of the adjacent lands, the relief of the poor, and the preservation of the publick roads’. The canal will also be ‘of great public utility’.
These documents demonstrate the explosion of interest and activity in the construction of canals in the mid eighteenth century, and the important role of Earl Gower in pioneering the development of navigable waterways for the benefit of local and national trade.
Earl Gower and his brother in law Francis Egerton (1736–1803), the third Duke of Bridgewater, were amongst the principal proprietors of the Trent Mersey Canal. In the Parliamentary act relating to the canal, the principal ‘Proprietors names’ listed for the canal are ‘the Right Honourable Earl Gower’ and ‘his Grace the Duke of Bridgewater’. The Act states that the people named were ‘desirous, at their own proper costs and charges, to begin, carry on, and complete the said navigable cut or canal’.
The first proposal of the meeting states ‘that application be made to Parliament this session, for an Act to make a Navigable Canal from the River Trent, at or near Wilden Ferry, in the County of Derby, to the River Mersey’.
The document also details the cost of ‘making and compleating the said Navigation’ which was estimated ‘at One Hundred and One Thousand Pounds’. It was decided that the cost would be ‘distributed into 505 shares, and raised by Subscription’. It was additionally agreed that ‘no one person should have more than Twenty Shares; and the Money to be advanced by each Subscriber in equal Proportions’. Once the canal was complete, subscribers were to ‘receive their proportion of the profits according to their shares’.
A subscription was also established ‘for a Fund to defray the necessary Expences in obtaining the Act’. A further Subscription was opened ‘for the Money which will be wanted for making and compleating the said Navigation’. The geographical diversity of these people reflects that many people spread over a large geographical area had an invested interest in the Trent-Mersey canal project. Amongst those listed are men at Liverpool and Manchester, as well as men from Stafford, Congleton, Newcastle, Lichfield, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Burton, Derby, Nottingham and Hull. Many of the places listed are where Granville Leveson-Gower, Earl Gower owned estates and exercised political control.
The proposals also concern the overseeing and management of the canal and its construction. The document states that subscribers were to have ‘votes according to their number of shares in the annual choice of a convenient number of directors, to be limited in the Act, who shall have the Management and Inspection of the Work’. The subscribers were also to have ‘commissioners named in the act to determine all controversies and disputes which may arise’.
The document states that ‘provisions’ were to be made in the Trent-Mersey canal Act ‘for the making full satisfaction to the land-owners, and their tenants, for all the lands to be taken for the use of such navigation, and for all damages, both present and future, which they may sustain thereby’.
The proposals also outline that the Act would include legislation which provided ‘all proper conveniences to such land-owners, and their tenants, and the same to be determined by commissioners, or juries, where necessary, in the usual manner’. A further proposal states ‘that no toll be taken for stones, gravel, or other materials for repairing the roads; nor for dung, soil or marl; nor more than half toll for lime or lime stone, for the improvement of land’.
Legislation is also proposed which related to the traffic using the new canal. The document states ‘for the consideration of parliament, that a proper and reasonable tonnage be fixed by the Act, in proportion to the distance that each vessel shall pass upon the navigation’.
The document demonstrates that the construction of navigable canals was a major public concern at this time. The final proposal listed states ‘that these resolutions be printed, and circulated as soon as conveniently may be, and inserted in the public papers’.