Description:This pamphlet, entitled Inland Navigation, outlines the contribution of the Trent and Mersey Canal to the relief of the poor in Stoke-on-Trent.
Should the canal be exempt from payment?
Often when an Act of Parliament granted permission to build a canal, the canal would be granted an exemption from parish rates - the payments that subsidised poor relief, including workhouses and 'houses of industry.'
No exemption had ever been negotiated for the Trent and Mersey Canal, when building began in 1766.
Who should pay?
But the pamphlet's authors argue that the land for the canal was purchased on the basis of 'not being subject to Taxes and Rates.' So any payments should be made by the original owners.
They quote contracts to prove their point, and ask whether it is right that the Trent and Mersey's owners should bear the burden of payment.
After all, the Staffordshire Potteries:
...may perhaps be justly said to owe their present eminent state of prosperity, if not their very existence, to the advantages derived from the Grand Trunk Canal...
Is it fair?
The pamphlet accuses the parish of Stoke-on-Trent of unfairly treating landowners and canal owners as different classes of people, and by different standards.
They also remind the parish that manure for farming and for repairing roads travels by canal toll-free.