helped him on in his early days. He continued to remember Mr. Pease with
gratitude and affection, and that gentleman, to the close of his life,
was proud to exhibit a handsome gold watch, received as a gift from his
celebrated _protege_, bearing these words;--"Esteem and gratitude: from
George Stephenson to Edward Pease."

[Picture: Middlesborough-on-Tees]

CHAPTER IX.
THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY PROJECTED.

The rapid growth of the trade and manufactures of South Lancashire gave
rise, about the year 1821, to the project of a tramroad for the
conveyance of goods between Liverpool and Manchester. Since the
construction of the Bridgewater Canal by Brindley, some fifty years
before, the increase in the business transacted between the two towns had
become quite marvellous. The steam-engine, the spinning-jenny, and the
canal, working together, had accumulated in one focus a vast aggregate of
population, manufactures, and trade.

Such was the expansion of business caused by the inventions to which we
have referred, that the navigation was found altogether inadequate to
accommodate the traffic, which completely outgrew all the Canal
Companies' appliances of wharves, boats, and horses. Cotton lay at
Liverpool for weeks together, waiting to be removed; and it occupied a
longer time to transport the cargoes from Liverpool to Manchester than it
had done to bring them across the Atlantic from the United States to
England. Carts and waggons were tried, but proved altogether
insufficient. Sometimes manufacturing operations had to be suspended
altogether, and during a frost, when the canals were frozen up, the
communication was entirely stopped. The consequences were often
disastrous, alike to operatives, merchants, and manufacturers.

Expostulation with the Canal Companies was of no use. They were
overcrowded with business at their own prices, and disposed to be very
dictatorial. When the Duke first constructed his canal, he had to
encounter the fierce opposition of the Irwell and Mersey Navigation,
whose monopoly his new line of water conveyance threatened to interfere
with. {147} But the innovation of one generation often becomes the
obstruction of the next. The Duke's agents would scarcely listen to the
remonstrances of the Liverpool merchants and Manchester manufacturers,
and the Bridgewater Canal was accordingly, in its turn, denounced as a
monopoly.

Under these circumstance