TRAVELING AT HIGH SPEEDS — HELE-SHAW. 645 



particular trying to secure the passing of the bill for improved com- 

 munication between Liverpool and Manchester, the question of speed 

 was the most important one raised. The opposing counsel, Mr. 

 Harrison, spoke as follows: 



When we set out with the original prospectus, we were to gallop, I know not at what 

 rate; I believe it was at the rate of 12 miles an hour. My learned friend, Mr. Adam, 

 contemplated — possibly alluding to Ireland — that some of the Irish members would 

 arrive in the wagons to a division. My learned friend says that they would go at the rate 

 of 12 miles an hour with the aid of the devil in the form of a locomotive, sitting, as 

 postilign on the fore horse, and an honorable member sitting behind him to stir up the 

 fire, and keep it at full speed. But the speed at which these locomotive engines are 

 to go has slackened: Mr. Adams does not go faster now than 5 miles an hour. The 

 learned sergeant (Spankie) says he should like to have 7, but he would be content to 

 go 6. I will show he can not go 6; and probably, for any practical purposes, I may 

 be able to show that I can keep up with him by the canal. * * * Locomotive 

 engines are liable to be operated upon by the weather. The wind will affect them; 

 and any gale of wind which would affect the traffic on the Mersey would render it 

 impossible to set off a locomotive engine either by poking the fire or keeping up the 

 pressure of steam till the boiler was ready to burst. 



The committee, after hearing the arguments of Mr. Harrison, 

 threw out the bill for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway by a 

 majority of 19 to 13. In order to realize that the above ideas were 

 general, the following may be quoted from the great journal of the 

 day, The Quarterly: 



What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of loco- 

 motives traveling twice as fast as stage coaches? * * * We trust that Parliament 

 will, in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed to 8 or 9 miles an hour, which we 

 entirely agree with Mr. Sylvester is as great as can be ventured on with safety. 



Even in more recent times we see the struggle for the road loco- 

 motion question turned on one of speed, and the supporters of the 

 new departure were unable to make any headway for many years, 

 partly because the speed limit was put at between 3 and 4 miles an 

 hour — that is, the limit of a walking man. A few years ago the 

 speed of 12 miles an hour, winch, after a great struggle, was obtained, 

 gave place to 20 miles an hour. You can see from the diagrams 

 which Mr. Legros gave in a recent paper before the Institution of 

 Mechanical Engineers, and which have been brought up to date, how 

 the speedier self-propelled vehicle is leading to the disappearance of 

 the horse — at any rate in London — and the difficulty winch most 

 people seem to feel is not how to get above the speed limit, but how 

 to keep within it, and the papers show, by a daily crop of sad exam- 

 ples, how only too painfully easy it is not to do so. 



Nothing points more clearly to what I have indicated as the basis 

 of our instinctive desire for speed, than the fact that our measure of 

 speed is entirely relative. Thus 60 miles an hour would be a slow 

 speed for a motor car on a racing track, as seen by the speeds of the 

 motor races at Brooklands last Saturday (March 25), but this speed, 



