376 THE KAIL WAY MANIA. CHAP. XVII. 



secured enormous gains ; but he had no desire to 

 accumulate a fortune without labour and without honour. 

 He himself never speculated in shares. When he was 

 satisfied as to the merits of any undertaking, he sub- 

 scribed for a certain amount of capital in it, and held 

 on, neither buying nor selling. At a dinner of the 

 Leeds and Bradford directors at Ben Eydding in October, 

 1844, before the mania had reached its height, he 

 warned those present against the prevalent disposition 

 towards railway speculation. It was, he said, like walk- 

 ing upon a piece of ice with shallows and deeps ; the 

 shallows were frozen over, and they would carry, but it 

 required great caution to get over the deeps. He was 

 satisfied that in the course of the next year many would 

 step on places not strong enough to carry them, and 

 would get into the deeps ; they would be taking shares, 

 and afterwards be unable to pay the calls upon them. 

 Yorkshiremen were reckoned clever men, and his advice 

 to them was, to stick together and promote communica- 

 tion in their own neighbourhood, not to go abroad 

 with their speculations. If any had done so, he advised 

 them to get their money back as fast as they could, for 

 if they did not they would not get it at all. He 

 informed the company, at the same time, of his earliest 

 holding of railway shares ; it was in the Stockton and 

 Darlington Railway, and the number he held was three 

 " a very large capital for him to possess at the time." 

 But a Stockton friend was anxious to possess a share, 

 and he sold him one at a premium of 33s. ; he supposed 

 he had been about the first man in England to sell a 

 railway share at a premium. 



During 1845, his son's offices in Great George-street, 

 Westminster, were crowded with persons of various 

 conditions seeking interviews, presenting very much the 

 appearance of the levee of a minister of state. The 

 burly figure of Mr. Hudson, the " Railway King," sur- 

 rounded by an admiring group of followers, was often 



