But this system could not develop fully until improvements in communications had been effected. So far as Lancashire was concerned, a start was made in 1720 with the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Act, though the contemplated scheme for a navigable waterway between Manchester and Liverpool was not completed until nearly twenty years later.[206] In the early fifties, road improvements were attracting much attention in Manchester, and the next twenty years witnessed a great advance in this direction in all parts of the country.[207] This development in road communication was accompanied by further development in water communication, the Act for the construction of the canal from Worsley to Manchester in 1759 marking a new starting-point. In 1762 the Act was passed for the canal from Manchester to Runcorn, where it joined the Mersey to Liverpool, and when it was completed the two towns were doubly linked by the old and the new navigations. The extent to which Manchester was connected with the rest of the country by road in 1772 may be seen from the number and the destination of the regular carriers in the town at that time.[208] [Footnote 206: Baines, _Lancashire and Cheshire_, iii., pp. 84-85.] [Footnote 207: _Manchester Mercury_, 1752 onwards. Smiles, _ibid._, p. 206. Between 1760 and 1774 452 Acts were passed for making and repairing highways.] [Footnote 208: _Infra_, p. 71.] With these developments the system of travelling about the country with goods, although it had changed its character somewhat, had not lost its importance, nor did it lose it for a long time. It was carried on by “petty chapmen,” and it was to such men that the terms hawkers and pedlars now applied. In the eighties of the eighteenth century a controversy arose, or rather one that had been simmering through the century reached the boiling point, which shows that men, thus designated, were still of great importance in inland trade. As a result of the Seven Years’ War, and the American War of Independence,[209] the country was faced with a financial crisis out of which the egregious “Sinking Fund” emerged, and many new taxes were levied to raise the required revenue. None raised such opposition in Manchester as the “fustian-tax” and the successful efforts to obtain its repeal were celebrated by an annual dinner for many years afterwards.[210] But the agitation against this tax was local, compared with that which arose in 1785 in connection with a tax on shops, and a proposal to repeal the licences of hawkers and pedlars, which was intended to make the shop-tax palatable. The proposal was carried into effect to the extent that additional duties were levied on hawkers and pedlars and their trade was regulated. [Footnote 209: National Debt, 1756, £72,000,000. End of Seven Years’ War, 1763, £136,600,000. End of American War, 1783, £238,000,000 (Bastable, _Public Finance_, pp. 632-633).]