other, a considerable transport of these articles on the canal may be expected, as well as other useful kinds of stone found in quarries near its course." After the American War, which ended in 1783, Manchester showed great activity in pushing forward various schemes for the extension of the water-communication with the surrounding districts. Amongst the canals made before the end of the century were those to Bolton and Bury, Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham; Manchester to Rochdale and Yorkshire; Kendal to Lancaster, Garstang, Preston, and West Houghton. On the latter packet boats conveying passengers to Preston went daily for many years. The only place in the county where the maritime trade was increasing was Liverpool, where in the last decade of the century some 4,500 vessels arrived annually, their tonnage being about one-fifth that of the ships which reached London each year. The chief trade was with Africa and the West Indies, at least one-fourth of the Liverpool vessels being employed in the slave trade. From Lancaster, before the stagnation of trade set in, about forty-seven vessels were trading with foreign ports, their chief cargoes being mahogany furniture and goods made in Manchester and Glasgow. The Ribble was not much used by boats of any considerable burden. To the cotton trade and all its developments must we look for the vast increase in the commercial prosperity of Lancashire which so strongly marked the last fifty years of the eighteenth century. The first invention which led to the present mode of spinning wool was the patent taken out in 1738 by Lewis Paul,[228] of Birmingham, for spinning of wool or cotton by machinery. The preamble to this grant sets forth that the machine was "capable of being set so as instantaneously to spin wool, cotton waste and wick-yarn to any degree, size, or twist with the greatest exactness, and is to be worked without handling or fingering the matter to be wrought, after the same be once placed in the machine, and requires so little skill that anyone, after a few minutes' teaching, will be capable of spinning therewith; and even children of five or six years of age may spin with the same, by which means the poorest of the clothiers will be enabled to supply their customers without suffering under the encumbrance of a dead stock of yarn, and the weavers may be supplied with such yarn as they shall want for their several occasions without that loss of time which often happens to them."