246 History of Inland Transport 



no danger of being sea-sick while on shore, that they are not 

 to be scalded to death, nor drowned by the bursting of the 

 boiler ; and that they need not fear being shot by the scattered 

 fragments, or dashed in pieces by the flying off or the breaking 

 of a wheel. But, with all these assurances we should as soon 

 expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be 

 fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets as trust them- 

 selves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate. 

 Their property they may, perhaps, trust ; but while one of 

 the finest navigable rivers in the world runs parallel to the 

 proposed railroad, we consider the other twenty per cent 

 which the subscribers are to receive for the conveyance of 

 heavy goods almost as problematical as that to be derived 

 from the passengers. We will back old Father Thames against 

 the Woolwich Railway for any sum." 



In " John Bull " for November 15, 1835, railways are 

 spoken of as " new-fangled absurdities," and it is declared 

 that " those people who judge by the success of the Man- 

 chester and Liverpool Railroad, and take it as a criterion for 

 similar speculations, are dunces and blockheads." In the 

 case of that particular railway, the writer argues, the distance 

 was short, the passengers were numerous, the " thing " 

 was new and the traffic was great above all the distance 

 was short ; but it did not follow that railways were going to 

 succeed elsewhere. He continues : 



" Does anybody mean to say that decent people, passengers 

 who would use their own carriages, and are accustomed to 

 their own comforts, would consent to be hurried along through 

 the air upon a railroad, from which, had a lazy schoolboy left 

 a marble, or a wicked one a stone, they would be pitched off 

 their perilous track, into the valley beneath ; or is it to be 

 imagined that women, who may like the fun of being whirled 

 away on a party of pleasure for an hour to see a sight, would 

 endure the fatigue, and misery, and danger, not only to 

 themselves, but their children and families, of being dragged 

 through the air at the rate of twenty miles an hour, all their 

 lives being at the mercy of a tin pipe, or a copper boiler, or 

 the accidental dropping of a pebble on the line of way ? 



" We denounce the mania as destructive of the country in 

 a thousand particulars the whole face of the Kingdom is to 

 be tattooed with these odious deformities ; huge mounds are 



