250 History of Inland Transport 



journey. Over 1000 tons a week were then going from Birming- 

 ham to London by water ; but there was great need for a 

 means of communication at once more speedy and more 

 trustworthy. Goods were delayed in transit even beyond 

 the three days ; they were rejected by the shippers because 

 they did not arrive in proper time ; they were sometimes held 

 up by frost on the canal between Birmingham and London 

 and lost their chance of getting to the Baltic before the 

 spring ; while, alternatively, they might be pilfered or lost 

 on the canal journey, and so not get even as far as London. 

 There was often much difficulty, also, in obtaining raw 

 materials. 



In the result manufacturers had to refuse orders because 

 they could not execute them in time, and the local industries 

 were not making anything like the advance of which, with 

 better transport facilities, they would have been capable. 

 The business that Birmingham manufacturers should have 

 been doing with Italy, with Spain, or with Portugal was 

 found to be drifting more and more into the hands of Conti- 

 nental competitors who had greater advantages both in ob- 

 taining raw materials on the spot and in distributing their 

 manufactured goods. It was further argued that in view 

 of the struggle then proceeding between this country and 

 Continental countries for commercial supremacy, the improve- 

 ment of the means of transport, even as regarded Birmingham 

 and London, was a matter of national, and not simply of 

 local, concern. 



It might well be assumed that such considerations as these 

 would have appealed to the patriotic instincts of the English 

 people, and especially to those of the landed gentry. Yet the 

 issue, in January, 1832, of the first prospectus of the London 

 and Birmingham Railway Company, and the introduction of 

 their Bill in February of the same year, led to opposition, to 

 extortion and to actual blackmail of the most determined 

 and most merciless description. 



The Bill passed in the Commons, but it was thrown out in 

 the Lords. Its rejection there was attributed to the land- 

 owners, who, it was declared, had " tried to smother the 

 company by the high price they demanded for their property." 

 The inevitable negotiations followed. Six months after the 

 defeat of the Bill the directors announced that the " mea- 



