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HISTORY OF
observance of all such rules and orders as may be made for the good ofthe same; upon that account I have allowed as great a breadth forthe top of the canals as possible, to obviate the above inconveniences,which are avoided in private navigation, where all the vessels that canbe used upon it are the property of one person, and the whole, togetherwith both men and boats, immediately under his directions.
The expence of these canals will come to about nine hundredpounds a mile, including the purchase of lands, erecting locks, buildingbridges, and making the proper paths on each side for towing theboats ; and surely this is not to be considered as a large sum, when itis well known that many turnpike roads in England have cost a thou-sand pounds a mile to repair them. Then let us imagine the vast differ-ence there will be in the carriage of goods, &c. between one and theother. We will fay for example, that on a mile of any such turnpikeroads one thousand tons of goods may be carried in a year, and in allprobability the passage of goods upon one mile of these canals may notbe so little as one hundred thousand tons : therefore, why can we thinkthe expence great, according to this proportion of repairing turnpikes,when all goods may be conveyed from east to west, much cheaper andsafer than any other way by these navigable canals, and the price ofcarriage will always continue the same ; whereas land carriage differsaccording to the badness of the roads, or the number of carriers, andis very often subject to great inconveniences, not to mention that allkinds of brittle goods are subject to be broke in pieces by loading andunloading into different waggons ? It must therefore be allowed, thatwater carriage is undoubtedly preferable to land carriage, especially onthese canals where boats would meet with no difficulties, but alwaysarrive at their station by the appointed time.
The distances from place to place are as follow: From Tem-bridge,where the canal begins, opposite to Batchacre Grange, twenty milesnine perches ; from thence to the highest point of land in the course8 of
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