Description:The letter featured above was written to Mr. Fenton by James Loch on 12th January 1825. The letter reveals Loch’s growing support of railway developments during this period. Loch writes ‘I have taken much pains to ascertain the power of the loco-motive engine & the facilities of Railways’. Based on information from ‘the most disinterested sources’, Loch reports that his research had found railways to be ‘a very superior mode of conveyance, if constructed on the proper principle.’
Concerned with the reluctance of canal proprietors, Loch confides in Fenton that he believed ‘upon so momentous a subject it is folly to blink the question & deceive oneself’. He writes ‘the country requires & will have additional means of communication’.
As Professor Eric Richards writes, Loch was ‘undoubtedly the most important influence in the Stafford family’. As the family’s Chief Agent, Loch was reluctant to advise the Marquis of Stafford to support either canals or railways exclusively. The letter above suggests that given the increase in demand for transport facilities, Loch envisaged an increase in trade for canals as well as for railways. At the conclusion of this letter Loch remarks that railways ‘must affect both canals & turnpikes’…but as they must encrease the wealth and commerce of the Country prodigiously they will not do so to the extent supposed by some’.
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. For discussion relevant to this letter, see particularly page 68.