CHAP. XI. STEPHENSON'S VEXATION. 21 5 



levels, his rigid cross -examination, followed by the 

 fact of his being superseded by another engineer, all 

 told fearfully upon him, and for some time he was as 

 much weighed down as if a personal calamity of the 

 most serious kind had befallen him. It is also right to 

 add that he was badly served by his surveyors, who 

 were unpractised and incompetent. On the 27th of 

 September, 1824, we find him writing to Mr. Sandars : 

 " I am quite shocked with Auty's conduct ; we must 

 throw him aside as soon as possible. Indeed, I have 

 begun to fear that he has been fee'd by some of the 

 canal proprietors to make a botch of the job. I have a 

 letter from Steele, 1 whose views of Auty's conduct quite 

 agree with yours." 



The result of this first application to Parliament was 

 so far discouraging. Mr. Stephenson had been so 

 terribly abused by the leading counsel for the opposition 

 in the course of the proceedings before the Committee 

 stigmatised by them as an ignoramus, a fool, and a 

 maniac that even his friends seem for a time to have 

 lost faith in him and in the locomotive system, whose 

 efficiency he nevertheless continued to uphold. Things 

 never looked blacker for the success of the railway sys- 

 tem than at the close of this great parliamentary struggle. 

 And yet it was on the very eve of its triumph. 



The Committee of Directors appointed to watch the 

 measure in Parliament were so determined to press on 

 the project of a railway, even though it should have to 

 be w r orked merely by horse-power, that the bill had 

 scarcely been thrown out ere they met in London to con- 



1 Hugh Steele and Elijah Galloway I jection of the Bill, he committed suicide 

 had conducted the survey at one in Stephenson's office at Newcastle, 

 part of the line, and Messrs. Oliver Mr. Gooch informs us that this im- 



and Blackett at another. The former 

 couple seem to have made some 

 grievous blunder in the levels on 



happy affair served to impress upon the 

 minds of Stephensoii's other pupils the 

 necessity of ensuring greater accuracy 



Chat Moss, and the circumstance | and attention in future, and that the 

 weighed so heavily on Steele's mind lesson, though sad, was not lost upon 

 that, shortly after hearing of the re- them. 



