CHAP. XI. STEPHENSON IN THE WITNESS-BOX. 203 



not long in it, before I began to wish for a hole to creep 

 out at ! I could not find words to satisfy either the 

 Committee or myself. I was subjected to the cross- 

 examination of eight or ten barristers, purposely, as far 

 as possible, to bewilder me. Some member of the Com- 

 mittee asked if I was a foreigner, and another hinted 

 that I was mad. But I put up with every rebuff, 

 and went on with my plans, determined not to be put 

 down." 



Mr. Stephenson stood before the Committee to prove 

 what the public opinion of that day held to be impos- 

 sible. The self-taught mechanic had to demonstrate 

 the practicability of accomplishing that which the most 

 distinguished engineers of the time regarded as im- 

 practicable. Clear though the subject was to himself, 

 and familiar as he was with the powers of the locomotive, 

 it was no easy task for him to bring home his convictions, 

 or even to convey his meaning, to the less informed 

 minds of his hearers. In his strong Northumbrian 

 dialect, he struggled for utterance, in the face of the 

 sneers, interruptions, and ridicule of the opponents of 

 the measure, and even of the Committee, some of whom 

 shook their heads and whispered doubts as to his sanity, 

 when he energetically avowed that he could make the 

 locomotive go at the rate of twelve miles an hour ! It 

 was so grossly in the teeth of all the experience of 

 honourable members, that the man " must certainly be 

 labouring under a delusion ! " 



And yet his large experience of railways and locomo- 

 tives, as described by himself to the Committee, entitled 

 this " untaught, inarticulate genius," as he has so well 

 been styled, to speak with confidence on such a subject. 

 Beginning with his experience as a brakesman at 

 Killing-worth in 1803, he went on to state that he 

 was appointed to take the entire charge of the steam- 

 engines in 1813, and had superintended the railroads con- 

 nected with the numerous collieries of the Grand Allies 



