1847.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECPS JOURNAL. 



273 



restrictions on gas companies, and requiring tlieni to comply wilh certain 

 regulations and to undergo a government inspection, before they were 

 allowed 10 open their works. 



Whereas the Board of Trade now claim to be the inspecting department 

 over public establishments, the Home Department was the one at that 

 time to which the gas companies were subjected, and in conformity with 

 the same predilections which now rule at Whitehall, a military officer was 

 appointed as inspector-general. Thr first inspector-general of gas-works 

 was the celebrated and ingenious Sir William Congreve, but, except as the 

 means of giving large fees to the gallant general, the inspection, even in 

 his hands, became quite a nullity, and we believe that since his death, no 

 inspector-general of gas-works has been appointed ; and at the present 

 day, no one knows anything of the safeguard of gas inspection or places 

 any faith in it, while the explosion of gasometers is so rare that it is not 

 thought of. 



If steamboats and gas-works are now able to do tolerably well without 

 inspection, and are daily brought nearer to absolute safety, it may be 

 expected, by cool-minded men, that in due lime railways may likewise be 

 able to do without inspection. As, too, so many public establishments 

 have been formed and matured without public inspection, we can see 

 nothing so peculiar in railway undertakings as to prevent them from 

 advancing to perfection without government help. 



At any rate, the present inspection is fruitless and unsatisfactory. The 

 only person who has been able to find any kind of utility in it has been 

 Punch, who says that when an accident takes place, and the public mind 

 is in great alarm, General Pasley or Captain Coddington is sent down, and 

 makes a report, complimenting everybody and everything, and showing 

 that nobody is to blame; and thereupon the public terror is quieted. 

 Certainly the inspectors' reports contain nothing else, and it would be 

 vain to seek in them for any practical suggestion or any original contribu- 

 ^on. 



Whether this state of affairs is attributable to the employment of mili- 

 tary engineers we do not allege, but, nevertheless, whatever value we may 

 attach to our mililitary brethren in their own department, we cannot, either 

 d priori or from any acquaintance with their actions, place any faith in 

 their civil capabilities. We very early pointed out the consequences of 

 putting officers of the Royal Engineers in a false position, and pitting 

 them in an unequal contest with the heads of the engineering profession 

 here, who are acknowledged to be the greatest civil engineers in the world. 

 Civil engineers ha\e exercised the greatest forbearance under the insult to 

 which they have been exposed, of the intrusion among them of incompe- 

 tent persons; but opportunities have necessarily arisen, in which eminent 

 men in this country have been compelled to express their contempt for the 

 judgment and attainments of the government functionaries. General 

 Pasley, who, among all the proceedings of the Board of Trade, has 

 remained exempt from the suspicion of corrupt motives, and whose cha- 

 racter as a highly honourable and well-intentioned ma", secure for him 

 personal respect, has lately, by an officious interposition on the subject of 

 the Menai Bridge, laid himself open to the observation of Mr. Robert 

 Stephenson, that he does not know anything about the plan, to which the 

 General supposes he offers insurmountable objections. 



One objection we made in the first instance to the appointment of 

 government officials, was the impossibility of government paying an ade- 

 quate salary to secure the services of individuals against the competition 

 of private enterprise. Sir Charles Pasley being a general no one of 

 course wants, and Mr. G. R. Porter is content to be promoted to Mr. 

 Macgregor's place as joint secretary to the Board of Trade ; but most 

 of the other parties attached to the railway department have passed over 

 to the side of the companies. The celebrated Mr. Samuel Laing, who 

 concocted the whole system of aggression on railways, and who was the 

 ambitious spirit of the Board of Trade, has for some time been a flourish. 

 ing railway parliamentary counsel, and is the author of a pamphlet against 

 the railway department. Captain O'Brien is a railway man ; Sir Frede- 

 rick Smith is still, we believe, chairman of the Belgian Eastern Junction 

 Railway, and we think in directorship ; Captain Coddington has accepted 

 the managership of a railway. The lime is perhaps not far distant, when 

 the Railway Board being disbanded, the Right Honourable Edward Strutt, 

 M.P., may succeed the Right Honourable George Hudson, M.P., in a 

 chairmanship ; — nay, who knows but in time, when he has seen a railway, 

 and gets to know something as to what it is, the Right Honourable Sir 

 Edward l^yan may be elected to a seat at some board ? These things 

 would not be more extraordinary than Mr. Laing writing pamphlets 

 against the Board of Trade. 



In the men of the Railway Board we have no confidence, and in their 

 measures no more ; and we are very little disposed to trust a progressive 

 institution like railways to their mercies. In a new age we have got a 

 new experience to learn, and we must have time to learn it. The only 

 thing we have to fear is lest, by our prejudices and our ill-timed meddling, 

 we keep hack the benefits which are tendered for our enjoyment. We 

 have kept back railways and we have kept back electric telegraphs, but 

 we are still on the verge of enjoying a vast extension of the resources of 

 science. This year the telegraph will speak with its lightning tongue to 

 the ends of the land ; the word which is said in London shall in the same 

 time be known in the great cities of the island, and shall meet with its 

 instant answer from beyond the utmost limits of the hearing or gaze of 

 man. The electric telegraph will be claimed by the same despots as 

 the railway ; gentle dulness will find evils in the telegraph which demand 

 its chastening care, and the concessions in railway inspection will be urged 

 as a reason for placing our correspondence under the same inquisitorial 

 regime. 



The effects of the electric telegraph prudence forbids us to limit or 

 assign, but it is evident a very great change must be produced in our 

 habits and associations. Not only must the whole range of commercial 

 transactiuns be affected, but even the operations of the law must be modi- 

 fied. It may be questioned whether, in the present state of jurisprudence, 

 the beneficial use of the telegraph in arresting the course of criminals be 

 not illegal, for it must often involve the absence of a writ or trespass on a 

 jurisdiction. We leave it to the lawyers to determine what form of writ 

 and what form of service they will adapt to the electric telegraph, in what 

 manner a Master in Chancery in Southampton-buildings shall take the 

 examination of a party at Liverpool, or how a Telegraph Affidavit Office 

 is to be organised in Paper-buildings, Temple ; but they are very likely to 

 be called upon to provide for a new state of circumstances, caused by the 

 revolutionary influence of the telegraph. 



We cannot but think it fortunate in every respect that the monstrous 

 Railway Bill of 1817 was not carried, for it would have greatly aggravated 

 the difficulties which now beset railway enterprise. How it can have 

 been brought forward in a country claiming to have a great school of poli- 

 tical economy seems wonderful, still more so that it should have received 

 the sanction of a department, which claims to be the scientific political de- 

 partment, and boasts of Huskisson, Lord Sydenham, Deacon Hume, Mac- 

 gregor, and Porter. We know no greater slur on the political economy of 

 this country than the series of railway bills, and we fear that it is to be 

 attributed to the sacrifice of political principles to personal ambition. The 

 foundation of political economy as applied to trade is the doctrine of non- 

 interference, which is violated by every railway bill. 



The provisions of the Janissary Bill of 1847 were intended to improve 

 railway administration, and to prevent undue speculation : the result would 

 have been to diminish directorial responsibility, and to favour the opera- 

 tions of stags. Of all provisions, that immediately affecting the surveys is 

 the one, which coming in our own line, most interests us, and we are able 

 to affirm that nothing could work worse. To require the deposit of 200/. a 

 mile in addition to the other exactions would have the exact eflect of in- 

 juring many good undertakings, of impeding all during times of commer- 

 cial distress, and of promoting the views of the stags in times of specula- 

 lion. The demand of any deposit as a security for the bona fide origina- 

 tion of an undertaking is a fallacy, which has nothing but the imagination 

 of its inventors to give it countenance. It is evident that during any tight- 

 ness of the money market the enforcement of a deposit must act as a strong 

 check ; but then it touches good undertakings as well as bad. In a time 

 of speculation, whether the deposit be 5 per cent., 10 per cent., 50 per 

 cent., or cent, per cent , it is perfectly immaterial, so far as the possibility 

 of raising it is concerned, and the unfortunate experience of 1825, before 

 the time of railway manias, proves this. It makes a great difference to the 

 projectors how much they can get into their hands to spend, but it makes 

 no difi'erence to the speculators, who are imagined to furnish the deposit, 

 as the deposit, in a fin mcial point of view, is for the most part fictitious. 



The famous deposits of 1845, which were used by the Times as such a 

 bugbear, involved only a few changes of figures in the bankers' books, and 

 it may be said that they never were in existence. Even of those sums 

 which got into the hands of projectors, the whole was not wasted, for as 

 they largely dabliled in scrip, and gambled with each other, so they in 

 effect worked for scrip, which may be considered an etherial medium. 



An acquaintance with the circumstances of railway engineers, sur- 

 veyor?, solicitors, secretaries, and projectors, will fully convince the in- 



37 



