A Letter to the Kensington Canal Company on the Substitution of the Pneumatic Railway for the Common Railway by Which They Contemplate Extending Their Line of Conveyance

Transcribed from the 1833 George Wightman edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY WHICH THEY CONTEMPLATE EXTENDING THEIR LINE OF CONVEYANCE.
BY JOHN VALANCE .
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE COMPANY.
LONDON: GEORGE WIGHTMAN, 24, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1833.
“Under circumstances of this sort, there can be no doubt that those microcosmic minds, which, habitually occupied in the consideration of what is little, are incapable of discerning what is great, and who already stigmatise the proposition as a romantic scheme, will, not unsparingly, distribute the epithets—absurd, ridiculous, chimerical. The commissioners must, nevertheless, have the hardihood to brave the sneers and sarcasms of men who, with too much pride to study, and too much wit to think, undervalue what they do not understand, and condemn what they cannot comprehend.”
Report on the Practicability of the Erie and Hudson Canal .
J. S. Hodson, Printer, Cross Street, Hatton Garden.
My Lord and Gentlemen,
THE contemplated addition of a railway to your line of conveyance, induces me to solicit the honour of your attention to a method of effecting your object, which may, perhaps, prove the cheapest and best you can adopt.
From the statements of the gentlemen who gave explanations on the subject at the meeting, your object appears to be, to effect some method of communication between your basin at Kensington, and some point of the Grand Junction Canal, and the proposed London and Birmingham Railway, which may enable you, either to take advantage of the Grand Junction Canal as a channel to convey and receive goods to and from, or of the proposed railway to Birmingham; so that you may be able to convey passengers to and from that railway, and to and from the western parts of town, should it be put into operation.