Nature, unaided by man, had not been so considerate to {136}Liverpool as she had been to Bristol, to Lynn, to Hull or to Boston. These, and other ports besides, stood on streams which were naturally navigable for more or less considerable distances into the interior of the country, whereas the Mersey was not naturally navigable for more than about fifteen or twenty miles above Liverpool. The navigation even of the estuary as far as Liverpool presented difficulties and dangers in stormy weather, owing to sand-banks, violent currents and rapid tides; but beyond Runcorn the Mersey was not then navigable at all. Nor were the tributaries of the Mersey--the Irwell and the Weaver--navigable. Liverpool was thus shut off from communication with the interior by river, and for a long time the town was not in a much better position as regards roads. No Roman road came nearer to Liverpool than Warrington, and, down to 1750 (as I have already shown), the road between Warrington and Liverpool was not passable for coaches or carriages. On the east Liverpool was practically isolated from the rest of the country by the high range of hills dividing Lancashire from Yorkshire, and there were the still more formidable hills of the Lake District on the north. The early route for a journey to the south from Liverpool was to cross the Mersey at Monk's Ferry, Birkenhead, and then pass through the forest of Wirral to Chester. Here there was found a Roman road, along which a coach to London was running in the reign of James II. (1685-1688), whereas the first coach from Warrington to London did not start until 1757. So long as our commercial relations were mainly with Continental or other ports which could be more conveniently reached from the east or the south coast, or from Bristol, and so long as the industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire were but little developed, or found an outlet abroad in these other directions, the comparative isolation of Liverpool was a matter of no great national concern; though how, in effect, Liverpool compared with other seaports or river-ports in the thirteenth century is shown by the fact (as told by Thomas Baines, in his "History of the Commerce and Town of Liverpool") that whereas the aggregate value of trading property in Liverpool, Lancaster, Preston and Wigan--the only four towns in Lancashire which then acknowledged possessing such property at all--was given in an official return for the {137}year 1343 as £233, equal to £3495 of our present money; the equivalent value to-day of the trading property of Bristol at the same period would be £30,000, and that of Nottingham, then the great inland port of the Trent, £50,000.