122 Sir Frederick Bramwell [May 19, 



tions by the Eeport whidi will, I presume, soon be issued by the 

 Commission appointed for the purpose, to consider, whether, by the 

 making of two covered ravines 20 miles in length, and having each 

 of them a width of only 14 feet, the safety of our insular position, 

 diminished as that safety is in these days of rapid steam propulsion 

 and transportation, would be affected in any appreciable degree. 



I am afraid, that notwithstanding my guarded utterances, you may 

 have gathered what my views are on those points which I am not 

 to-night to enter upon. If, however, any here have not so gathered 

 them, I can only say to those who may be interested in knowing 

 what my opinion is, that in the right places and at the right times, I 

 am fully prepared to clearly state my views, and to give reasons 

 for the faith that is in me concerning them. 



In the interest of a Channel tunnel, what a happy circumstance it 

 was, that the unknown platelayer of the Stockton and Darlington 

 Railway, who took there the gauge he had used in the colliery 

 lines, had not, at about the same time, imitators in France, and in the 

 different countries of the Continent. No doubt, if in these countries 

 the development of railways had been made simultaneously, by their 

 engineers, with the development of railways in England, we should 

 have had some highly scientific fraction of an imaginary section of 

 the earth's surface — a fraction containing probably six places of 

 decimals and some repeaters — acknowledging the want of absolute 

 accuracy in the decimal quantity — adopted as the gauge of the lines 

 of railway in France, another one in Germany, and a third in 

 Italy, But luckily, when railways spread on the Continent, they 

 spread from England, and they spread by means of English en- 

 gineers, and before our Continental friends knew where they were 

 they found themselves employing the 4 feet 8J inch gauge, with 

 which the railways in this country are, as a rule, laid. So it is, that, 

 excluding the Peninsula and Russia, a railway carriage may start from 

 Calais and go over the whole continent of Europe ; and so it will be, 

 when a Channel tunnel is made, that a railway carriage may start 

 from Thurso or Wick, and passing through London, may join on to 

 the train from Charing Cross, traverse the tunnel, and continue 

 without any break of gauge, or trans-shipment of passengers, through 

 France, Italy, and Germany. 



Having premised this much, I will at once pass to the first of the 

 two divisions of my lecture — The Making of a Channel Tunnel. 



Those who have studied the subject of tunnel-making will be aware 

 that, as a rule, tunnels either have to be carried through soils of so 

 loose a character, that they cannot stand for a moment without 

 support, or they have to be executed in rock, more or less hard, often 

 much harder than can be dealt with by hand labour. In this latter 

 case, the driving forward is effected by blasting, an operation involv- 

 ing either great manual labour for the preparation of the holes into 

 which the blasting charges are to be put, or, in later days, involving 

 fche employment of machinery (worked by compressed air) to make 



