"Though this useful set of Men, the Farmers, will undoubtedly reap a Proportion of Advantages from the Execution of this beneficial Scheme, they are far from being satisfied, and seem to reflect upon it with many Doubts and Fears. Custom, indeed, and Occupation in Life, cast a wonderful Influence on the Opinions of all Mankind; it is therefore by no means surprizing that men, whose Forefathers, for Ages, have been inured to rugged and deep Roads, to wade after their Beasts of Burden up to the Knees in Mire, to see their loaded Waggons stick fast in Dirt; Men, who from their interior, inland Situation, are almost totally unacquainted with all Objects of Navigation; it is by no means strange, {182}that People, so unaccustomed, should consider an Attempt, to introduce a navigable Canal up to the Town of Chesterfield, and within the Air of the Peak-Mountains, with alarming Ideas, with Suspicion and Amazement." Another set of scruples was thus dealt with by Richard Whitworth--himself a canal enthusiast--in his "Advantages of Inland Navigation" (1766):-- "It has been a common objection against navigable canals in this Kingdom that numbers of people are supported by land carriage, and that navigable canals will be their ruin.... I must advance an alternative which would free the carrier from any fear of losing his employment on selling off his stock of horses, viz.:--That no main trunk of a navigable canal ought reasonably to be carried nearer than within four miles of any great manufacturing town, ... which distance from the canal is sufficient to maintain the same number of carriers, and employ almost the same number of horses, as usual, to convey the goods down to the canal in order to go to the seaports for exportation.... If a manufacturer can have a certain conveniency of sending his goods by water carriage within four miles of his own home, surely that is sufficient, and profit enough, considering that other people must thrive as well as himself, and a proportion of profit to each trade should be the biassing and leading policy of this nation." In some instances certain towns did succeed in maintaining a distance of several miles between themselves and the canals they regarded with prejudice and disfavour. They anticipated, in this respect, the action that other towns were to take up later on in regard to railways; and in the one case as in the other there was abundant cause for regret when the places concerned found they had been left aside, much to their detriment, by a main route of trade and transport.