CHAP. XVII. CHESTER AND BIRKENHEAD. 369 



Thus, when the first application was made to Parliament 

 for the Chester and Birkenhead Eailway Bill, the pro- 

 moters were defeated. They repeated their application, 

 on the understanding that in event of their succeeding, 

 the engineer and surveyor were to be paid their costs 

 in respect of the defeated measure. The Bill was 

 successful, and to several parties their costs were paid. 

 Mr. Stephenson's amounted to 800., and he very nobly 

 said, " You have had an expensive career in Parlia- 

 ment ; you have had a great struggle ; you are a young 

 Company ; you cannot afford to pay me this amount of 

 money ; I will reduce it to 200/., and I will not ask you 

 for that 200/. until your shares are at 20/. premium ; for 

 whatever may be the reverses you will go through, I 

 am satisfied I shall live to see the day when your 

 shares will be at 20/. premium, and when I can legally 

 and honourably claim that 200/." * We may add that 

 the shares did eventually rise to the premium specified, 

 and the engineer was no loser by his generous conduct 

 in the transaction. 



Another novelty of the time, with which George 

 Stephenson had to contend, was the substitution of 

 atmospheric pressure for locomotive stean>power in the 

 working of railways. The idea of obtaining motion by 

 means of atmospheric pressure is said to have originated 

 with Papin, the French philosopher, more than a century 

 and a half ago; but it slept until revived in 1810 by 

 Mr. Medhurst, who published a pamphlet to prove the 

 practicability of carrying letters and goods by air. In 

 1824, Mr. Yallance of Brighton took out a patent for 

 projecting passengers through a tube large enough to 

 contain a train of carriages ; the tube being previously 

 exhausted of its atmospheric air. The same idea was 

 afterwards taken up, in 1835, by Mr. Pinkus, an inge- 



1 Speech of Wm. Jackson, Esq., I Birkenhead Railway Company, held at 

 M.P., at the meeting of the Chester and j Liverpool, October, 1845. 



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