APPENDIX 247 



" That your petitioner has seen, with considerable 

 dismay, the invention and rapid increase of raih'oads 

 during the last few years, accomplishing the ruin of 

 hundreds in the same employment as your j^etitioner ; 

 and now, by the numerous Bills before your Honourable 

 House, threatening the very livelihood of your jDetitioner 

 and his numerous family. 



" That your petitioner, not actuated by selfish motives 

 alone, but viewing with deep sympathy the distress, the 

 discontent, the poverty, and the ruin, that has lately, and 

 does now partially, pervade the land, would humbly point 

 out to your Honourable House how much the invention 

 and use of railroads has had to do with their increase. 



" That your petitioner, j3assing over the large amount 

 invested in turnpike trusts, now become bankrupt in 

 consequence of substituting railroad for stage-coach 

 travellino:, which has been more than once mooted in 

 your Honourable House, would proceed at once to show 

 the direct injury, the devastating ruin, that has fallen, 

 not only on those immediately connected with stage-coach 

 business (with the exception of a few, and those of an 

 extraordinary character), but through them with every 

 class of tradesmen inhabiting towns situate in any of our 

 great thoroughfares, whether they be North, South, East, 

 or West. 



" And your petitioner would further proceed to show 

 that this injury has its ramifications from one end of the 

 Island to the other, threatening the depreciation of pro- 

 perty to a ruinous extent ; as a proof of which, your 

 petitioner need only point to every town in the kingdom 

 which a railroad has approached, except two or three of 



