362 HIGH FARMING, 1837-1874 



they were public highways, maintained, hke turnpike roads, by the 

 payments of those who used them. The Canal Companies provided 

 no rolling stock. On payment of the stipulated tolls, any trader 

 might transport his goods over the flanged rails in his owjl vehicles 

 to the wharves. In the development of these lines, which were 

 subsidiary to inland waterways, the lead was taken by the valley 

 of the Severn, the Western Midlands, and South Wales. The 

 utihty of the system was at once apparent. Rail-waj^s multipHed 

 rapidly, not as rivals, but as aids, to the canals which they eventually 

 destroyed. 



Numerous rail-ways, either in private hands or feeders to canals, 

 existed at the end of the eighteenth century. The first pybHc 

 indep^dent rail- way was constructed^ by Act of Parliamant uxJSOl. 

 The Surrey Iron Rail-way connected Croydon and the mills on the 

 Wandle with the Thames at Wandsworth. Originally intended to 

 run to Portsmouth, it was never carried beyond Merstham. Nearly 

 twenty years later an Act of ParHament (1821) was obtained for 

 the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Rail-way. On 

 this hne all the stages in the transformation of the ancient rail-way 

 into the modern type were exemplified. Hitherto speed had not 

 been regarded as an object. Horses were generally employed, and, 

 where steam had been introduced as the motive power, its use had 

 been practical^ confined to stationary engines, placed at the top of 

 inclines, which by means of ropes or chains drew waggons up the 

 ascent and regulated the pace of their descent. In poetry, Erasmus 

 Darwin ^ had anticipated the coming triumph of steam : 



" Soon shall thy arm, unconqiiered Steam ! afar 

 Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car ; 

 Or on wide-waving Wings expanded bear 

 The flying chariot thro' the fields of air ! " 



But in 1820 the vision of the " rapid car," drawn by steam, stiU 

 seemed as extravagant as the dream of the " flying chariot " appeared 

 to a later generation familiar with fast trains. The projectors of 

 the Stockton and Darlington Railway hesitated between wooden or 

 iron rails, between animal or steam power, between stationary or 

 movable engines. When the liije was opened in 1825, the waggons, 

 under the advice of George Stephenson, were drawn over iron rails 

 at an average pace of five rtiiTes an hour by steam locomotives, 

 designed on the model of the engines which he had successfully 



1 The Botanic Garden, Part I. 289. 



