454 RAILWAY CELEBRATION AT MANCHESTER. CHAP. XX. 



to bless the enterprise, and to bid all hail to railway 

 progress, as "enabling them to carry on with greater 

 facility those operations in connexion with religion which 

 were calculated to be so beneficial to the country." The 

 army, speaking through the mouth of General A' Court, 

 acknowledged the vast importance of railways, as tend- 

 ing to improve the military defences of the country. 

 And representatives from eight corporations were there 

 to acknowledge the great benefits which railways had 

 conferred upon the merchants, tradesmen, and working 

 classes of their respective towns and cities. 



Shortly after this celebration at Tarn worth, Mr. Ste- 

 phenson was invited to be present at an assemblage of 

 railway men in Manchester, at which a testimonial was 

 presented to Mr. J. P. Westhead, the former chairman 

 of the Manchester and Birmingham Railway. The 

 original Liverpool and Manchester line had now swelled 

 into gigantic proportions. It formed the nucleus of the 

 vast system now known as the London and North- 

 western Railway. First one line, and then another, of 

 which Mr. Stephenson was the engineer, had been amal- 

 gamated with it, until the main line extended from 

 London to Lancaster, stretching out its great arms to 

 Leeds in one direction and Holy head in the other, and 

 exercising an influence over other northern lines, as far 

 as Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen. On the occasion 

 to which we refer, Mr. "Stephenson, the " father of rail- 

 ways," was not forgotten. It was mainly his ingenuity, 

 energy, and perseverance that had called forth the 

 commercial enterprise which issued in this magnificent 

 system of internal communication ; and the railway men 

 who assembled to do honour to Mr. Westhead did not 

 fail to recognise the great practical genius through 

 whose labours it had been established. He was "the 

 rock from which they had been hewn," observed Mr. 

 Westhead, the father of railway enterprise, and the 



