274 History of Inland Transport 



sixth half-yearly meeting, at Paddington, of the South Wales 

 Railway Company (of which he was also chairman), and 

 reported in " The Times " of the following day. Referring 

 to a pamphlet which had been issued attacking the policy of 

 the Great Western Railway Company, Mr Russell said : 



" If their engagements were extensive, and he did not 

 deny that they were so, they had been entered in only as a 

 matter of necessity. They all arose out of the mania of 

 1845-46, and even in the pamphlet in question it had been 

 admitted that the Great Western was not one of those com- 

 panies which at that time had promoted any of the many 

 schemes which were afloat. He, as far as he was concerned, 

 had not only not promoted these projects, but had taken 

 every means in his power to check them. In January, 1846, 

 in his place in Parliament he had predicted the results if 

 some steps were not at once adopted to put a curb upon 

 reckless speculation ; but most unfortunately for all parties 

 that was not the view which was taken by the House of 

 Commons. Mr Hudson and other gentlemen maintained that 

 the course he recommended would be an unfair interference 

 with private enterprise, and the consequence was that schemes 

 involving altogether the sum of 125,000,000 passed through 

 the Legislature in that year. The Great Western had remon- 

 strated with the President and the Vice-President of the 

 Board of Trade, and, left to their own resources, they had 

 been compelled, in self-defence, to look after their own 

 interests by getting hold of all the rival or contemplated rival 

 schemes." 



In some instances the existing companies guaranteed 

 interest to the shareholders of branches and extensions which 

 were feared as rivals. F. S. Williams, in " Our Iron Roads," 

 says of such lines as these that while many of them were 

 accepted as feeders they " proved for a time to be only 

 suckers." 



The effects of the mania on the finances of existing rail- 

 way companies was further shown by the fact that, in order 

 to pay their contractors, some of the companies were obliged 

 during the crisis to raise money at from ten to thirty, and, 

 in some instances it is said, even at fifty per cent discount. 

 Then, also, the shares in ten leading companies suffered be- 

 tween 1845 and 1847 a depreciation in value estimated at 



