My situation being well known to my friends, Mr. Gill, a distant relation by my mother, who had taken much notice of me before I went to the academy, and had often lent me books, procured me an invitation to preach as a candidate at Sheffield, on the resignation of Mr. Wadsworth. Accordingly I did preach as a candidate, but though my opinions were no objection to me there, I was not approved. But Mr. Haynes, the other minister, perceiving that I had no chance at Sheffield, told me that he could recommend me to a congregation at Nantwich in Cheshire, where he himself had been settled; and as it was at a great distance from Needham, he would endeavour to procure me an invitation to preach there for a year certain. This he did, and I gladly accepting of it, removed from Needham, going thence to London by sea, to save expence. This was in 1758, after having been at Needham just three years.[4] [4] It is about sixty miles from Needham to London, so that the roads must have been in a bad state to render a water passage more eligible than by land. The first turnpike in England was authorized by an act of Ch. II. 1663 but the system was not adopted with spirit until near the middle of the last century. The manufacturing inland towns of Great Britain, such as Manchester, Leeds, Halifax, &c. chiefly carried on their business through the medium of travelling pedlars, and afterwards on pack horses. The journey in this manner from Manchester to London occupied a fortnight; and it was not unusual for a trader going the first time himself on this expedition to take the prudent precaution of making his will. At present the mail stage performs the journey in about a day and a half. In the beginning of this century (as Dr. Aikin in his history of Manchester observes) it was thought a most arduous undertaking to make a public road over the hills that separate Yorkshire and Lancashire; now, they are pierced by three navigable canals. Indeed the prosperous state of British manufactures and commerce, seems to have originated and progressed with the adoption of turnpikes and canals. They facilitate not merely the carriage and interchange of heavy materials necessary to machinery, but they make personal intercourse cheap, speedy and universal; they thus furnish the means of seeing and communicating improvements, and of observing in what way one manufacture may be brought to bear upon another widely different in its kind. We are not yet sufficiently aware of their importance in America, even to the interests of agriculture. T. C.