Page:Rivers, Canals, Railways of Great Britain.djvu/188

 purposes of this act, the sum of £50,000, in five hundred shares of £100 each, and an additional sum of £30,000, if necessary, by creating new shares.

EXEMPTION FROM TOLL.
Paving-stones, Sand, Gravel, and all other Material for the repair of Roads; Dung, Soil, Marl, and all sorts of Manure, provided they do not pass a Lock, except at such Times as the Water flows over it.

Vessels under Fifteen Tons not to pass Locks without leave.

Wharfage to be paid for all Goods remaining more than Twenty-four Hours on the Wharfs, but no Charge to be made for the Use of the Crane, which the Company are required to erect on the Bank of the Canal, near Tamworth.

Proprietors of Lands may erect Wharfs, but that no more than Three-pence per Ton shall be charged for Goods which shall not remain more than Six Days.

Mr. James Brindley was the original engineer to this canal, and made the estimate for constructing it; but it appears that the amount of subscriptions was expended in executing between sixteen and seventeen miles of the line, viz, from Coventry to Atherstone; and as the company failed to raise any portion of the £30,000, which the act of 8th George III. authorized them to do, an end was put to the further prosecution of the remaining twenty-one miles of canal, until 1782, when a meeting of delegates from the Coventry, Oxford, and Trent and Mersey Canal Companies, and the subscribers to a proposed canal from the Wednesbury Collieries, to join the Coventry Canal, at Fazeley, took place at Coleshill, on the 20th of June in that year, where it was agreed that the Trent and Mersey Canal Company and the subscribers to the proposed canal, should execute the line from Fradley to Fazeley, (which is eleven miles in length and level,) and divide it equally between the last-mentioned company and the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal Company.

In an act passed on the 24th of June, 1783, authorizing the making of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, the agreement above referred to is confirmed, and that half lying between Fazeley and Whittington Brook, is declared to belong to the last mentioned company, and the other half, terminating at Fradley, to the Trent and Mersey Canal Company; and, it was further