A story is told of an old stage-coach driver who, finding that his occupation had been seriously interfered with by the modern innovation of railways, thought he would strike a blow for the old system by attacking the railway in a vulnerable part. “Consider,” he argued, “what happens in case of a collision. If two stage coaches come into collision, and there is an upset, why, there you are. But in a railway collision, where are you?” In those days stage coaches did not enjoy the immunity from disaster that they do in these, when macadamised roads enable them to roll along almost as if they were on a billiard table.[11] When the canal system was being fairly started in England, only one stage coach ran between London and Edinburgh, starting once a month from each city, and taking ten days for the journey in summer, and twelve days in winter. It took fourteen days to travel between London and Glasgow. In 1760 it took three days to travel from Sheffield to London, and in 1774 Burke travelled from London to Bath with what was described as “incredible speed” in twenty-four hours. Much of the discomfort, the high range of prices, the general existence of poverty, the limited extent of commercial operations, in the early part of the eighteenth century was no doubt due to the imperfect development of the modern processes of manufacture and distribution—to the production of textiles by the old hand-loom, of iron by the old-fashioned type of blast-furnace, of steel by the costly cementation process, of clothing without the aid of the sewing-machine, and of agricultural crops without any of the mechanical aids to husbandry that are now so general and so conducive to economical working. But the high cost of transport had also much to answer for. Before the period of Macadam, it cost 2_s._ 6_d._ per mile to transport coal by the old pack-horse on an ordinary road. At this rate, it would have cost from 10_l._ to 15_l._ to transport a ton of coals from the Midland coalfield to London, a service which is now performed for 6_s._ to 7_s._ per ton. With only the old pack-horse facilities it would have cost an almost incredible sum to have performed the same service which the railways now render to the people of the United Kingdom in the transport of minerals and merchandise.