James Brindley had served his apprenticeship to a millwright, or engineer; he had started a little business as a repairer of old machinery and a maker of new; and he had in various ways given proof of his possession of mechanical skill. The Duke--evidently a reader of men--saw in him the possibility of better things, took him over, and appointed him his right-hand man in constructing the proposed canal. After much active opposition from the proprietors of the Mersey and Irwell Navigation, and also from various landowners and others, the Duke got his first Act, to which the Royal assent was given in 1762, and the work was begun. It presented many difficulties, for the canal had to be carried over streams and bogs, and through tunnels costly to make, and the time came when the Duke's financial resources were almost exhausted. Brindley's wages were not extravagant. They amounted, in fact, to £1 a week--substantially less than the minimum wage that would be paid to-day to a municipal road-sweeper. But the costs of construction were heavy, and the landowners had unduly big ideas of the value of the land compulsorily acquired from them, so that the Duke's steward sometimes had to ride about among the tenantry and borrow a few pounds from one and another in order to pay the week's wages. When the Worsley section had been completed, and had become remunerative, the Duke pledged it to Messrs Child, the London bankers, for £25,000, and with the money thus raised he pushed on with the remainder of the canal, seeing it finally extended to Liverpool in 1772. Altogether he expended on his own canals no less than £220,000; but he lived to derive from them a revenue of £80,000 a year. The Duke of Bridgewater's schemes gave a great impetus to canal construction in Great Britain, though it was only natural that a good deal of opposition should be raised, as well. About the year 1765 numerous pamphlets were published to show the danger and impolicy of canals. Turnpike trustees were afraid the canals would divert traffic from the roads. Owners of pack-horses fancied that ruin stared them in the face. Thereupon the turnpike trustees and the pack-horse owners sought the further support of the agricultural interests, representing that, when the demand for pack-horses fell off, there would be less need for hay and oats, and the welfare of British agriculture would be prejudiced. So the farmers joined in, and the three parties combined in an effort to arouse the country. Canals, it was said, would involve a great waste of land; they would destroy the breed of draught horses; they would produce noxious or humid vapours; they would encourage pilfering; they would injure old mines and works by allowing of new ones being opened; and they would destroy the coasting trade, and, consequently, "the nursery for seamen."