At Newcastle, a plan was set on foot for connecting the Tyne with the Solway Firth by a canal. A county meeting was held on the subject in August, 1817, under the presidency of the high sheriff. Previous to this time, Sir John Swinburne had stood up for a railway in preference to a canal; but when the meeting took place, the opinion of those present was in favor of a canal--Mr. William Armstrong (father of the present Sir William) being one of the most zealous advocates of the water-road. Yet there were even then railroads in the immediate neighborhood of Newcastle, at Wylam and Killingworth, which had been successfully and economically worked by the locomotive for years past, but which the Northumbrians seem completely to have ignored. The public head is usually very thick, and it is difficult to hammer a new idea into it. Canals were established methods of conveyance, and were every where recognized; whereas railways were new things, and were struggling hard to gain a footing. Besides, the only public railway in England, the Wandsworth, Croydon, and Merstham, had proved a commercial failure, and was held up as a warning to all speculators in tram-ways. But, though the Newcastle meeting approved of a canal in preference to a railway from the Tyne to the Solway, nothing was really done to promote the formation of either. The movement in favor of a canal was again revived at Stockton. A requisition, very numerously signed by persons of influence in South Durham, was presented to the Mayor of Stockton in May, 1818, requesting him to convene a public meeting "to consider the expediency of forming a canal for the conveyance of coal, lime, etc., from Evenwood Bridge, near West Auckland, to the River Tees, upon a plan recently made by Mr. George Leatham, engineer." Among the names attached to the petition we find those of Edward, John, and Thomas Pease, and John Dixon, Darlington. They were doubtless willing to pull with any party that would open up a way, whether by rail or by water, between the Bishop Auckland coal-field and Stockton, whether the line passed through Darlington or not.