CHAP. XV. THE RAILWAY OPPOSED. 303 



orders of Parliament, being very limited, the necessary 

 documents were prepared in great haste, and were 

 deposited in such an imperfect state as to give just 

 grounds for presuming that they would not pass the 

 ordeal of the Standing Orders Committee. It was also 

 thought that alterations might be made in some parts of 

 the railway which would remove the objections of the 

 principal landowners, and it was therefore determined 

 to postpone the application to Parliament until the 

 following session. 



In the mean time the opponents of the bill out of 

 doors were not idle. Numerous pamphlets w^ere pub- 

 lished, calling on the public to " beware of the bubbles," 

 and holding up the promoters of railways to ridicule. 

 They were compared to St. John Long and similar 

 quacks, and pronounced fitter for Bedlam than to be 

 left at large. The canal proprietors, landowners, and 

 road trustees, made common cause in decrying and 

 opposing the project. The failure of railways was con- 

 fidently predicted indeed, it was elaborately attempted 

 to be proved that they had failed ;* and it was indus- 

 triously spread abroad that the locomotive engines, 

 1 laving been found useless and highly dangerous on the 

 Liverpool and Manchester line, were immediately to be 



1 In a book published in 1834, en- still further improved, and steam- 

 titled * Railroad Impositions Detected,' carriages will be in the field many 

 by Richard Cort, son of the inventor times more profitable than railways 

 of the iron-puddling process, the ever can be, and eventually quite as 

 " Bubble Railway Speculations " of expeditious." And again : " As an 

 the time were strongly inveighed additional comfort to shareholders in 

 against. The writer proved incontro- the London and Birmingham Railway, 

 vertibly, to his own satisfaction, that it should be observed that in less than 

 the Liverpool and Manchester line twelve months from the passing of the 

 had not, during the time it had been Bill for the Granite Road from Lon- 

 at work, made so much as one per don to Birmingham, now actually 

 cent, profit, and that it must soon planning side by side of that unfortu- 

 to pay any dividend whatever, nate speculation, the stone tramway 

 and involve its proprietors in hopeless will be ready to receive steam-car- 

 ruin. With canals and common roads, riages, to enable them to run quite as 

 however, the case was altogether dil- fast as the iron railway-coaches. If 

 ferent. " Long before any more new this be true, who will subscribe one 

 lines can be constructed," said the farthing to the Birmingham railway ? " 

 writer, " inland navigation will be 



