196 \ SPECULATIVE MANIA OF 1825. CHAP. X. 



line were told that their houses would be burnt up by 

 the fire thrown from the engine-chimneys ; while the 

 lir around would be polluted by clouds of smoke. There 

 would no longer be any use for horses ; and if railways 

 xtended, the species would become extinguished, and 

 oats and hay be rendered unsaleable commodities. Travel- 

 ling by rail would be highly dangerous, and country inns 

 would be ruined. Boilers would burst and blow pas- 

 sengers to atoms. But there was always this consola- 

 tion to wind up with that the weight of the locomotive 

 would completely prevent its moving, and that rail- 

 ways, even if made, could never be worked by steam- 

 power. 



Nevertheless, the canal companies of Leeds, Liver- 

 pool, and Birmingham, called upon every navigation 

 company in the kingdom to oppose railways wherever 

 they were projected, but more especially the Liverpool 

 and Manchester scheme, the battle with which they 

 evidently regarded as their Armageddon. A Birming- 

 ham journal invited a combined opposition to the mea- 

 sure, and a public subscription was entered into for the 

 purpose of making it effectual . The newspapers gene- 

 rally spoke of the project as a mere speculation ; some 

 wishing it success, although greatly doubting; others 

 ridiculing it as a delusion, similar to the many other 

 absurd projects of that madly-speculative period. It 

 was a time when balloon companies proposed to work 

 passenger traffic through the air at forty miles an hour, 

 and when coaching companies projected carriages to run 

 on turnpikes at twelve miles an hour., with relays of 

 bottled gas instead of horses. There were companies for 

 the working of American gold and silver mines, com- 

 panies for cutting ship canals through Panama and 

 Nicaragua, milk companies, burying companies, fish 

 companies, and steam companies of all sorts ; and many, 

 less speculatively disposed than their neighbours, were 



