PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION.
On the third reading of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill in the House of Commons, The Hon. Edward Stanley moved that the bill be read that day six months, assigning, among other reasons, that the railway trains worked by horses would take ten hours to do the distance, and that they could not be worked by locomotive engines. Sir Isaac Coffin seconded the motion, indignantly denouncing the project as fraught with fraud and imposition. He would not consent to see widows’ premises invaded, and “how,” he asked, “would any person like to have a railroad under his parlour window? . . . What, he would like to know, was to be done with all those who had advanced money in making and repairing turnpike-roads? What with those who may still wish to travel in their own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers? What was to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen, innkeepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the House aware of the smoke and noise, the hiss and whirl, which locomotive engines, passing at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, would occasion? Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay. . . . Iron would be raised in price 100 per cent., or, more probably, exhausted altogether! It would be the greatest nuisance, the most complete disturbance of quiet and comfort in all parts of the kingdom, that the ingenuity of man could invent!”
SPEED OF RAILWAY ENGINES.
At the present day it is amusing to read the speeches of the counsel employed against an act of Parliament being passed in favour of the railway between Liverpool and Manchester. Mr. Harrison, who appeared on behalf of certain landowners against the scheme, thus spoke with regard to the powers of the locomotive engine:—“When we set out with the original prospectus—I am sorry I have not got the paper with me—we were to gallop, I know not at what rate, I believe it was at the rate of twelve miles an hour. My learned friend, Mr. Adam, contemplated, possibly in alluding to Ireland, that some of the Irish members would arrive in wagons to a division. My learned friend says, that they would go at the rate of twelve miles an hour, with the aid of a devil in the form of a locomotive, sitting as a postillion upon the fore-horse, and an Honourable Member, whom I do not see here, sitting behind him to stir up the fire, and to keep it up at full speed. But the speed at which these locomotive engines are to go has slackened; Mr. Adam does not now go faster than five miles per hour. The learned Sergeant says, he should like to have seven, but he would be content to go six. I will show you he cannot go six; and probably, for any practical purposes, I may be able to show, that I can keep up with him by the canal. Now the real evidence to which you alone can pay attention shows, that practically, and for useful purposes, upon the average, and to keep up the rate of speed continually, they may go at something more than four miles an hour. In one of the collieries, there is a small engine with wheels four feet in diameter, which, with moderate weights has gone six; but I will not admit, because, in an experiment or two, they may have been driven at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour—because a small engine has been driven at the rate of six, that this is the average rate at which they can carry goods upon a railroad for the purpose of commerce, for that is the point to which the Committee ought to direct their attention, and to which the evidence is to be applied. It is quite idle to suppose, that an experiment made to ascertain the speed, when the power is worked up to the greatest extent, can afford a fair criterion of that which an engine will do in
all states of the weather. In the first place, locomotive engines are liable to be operated upon by the weather. You are told that they are affected by rain, and an attempt has been made to cover them; but the wind will affect them, and any gale of wind which would affect the traffic on the Mersey, would render it impossible to set off a locomotive engine, either by poking up the fire, or keeping up the pressure of the steam till the boiler is ready to burst. I say so, for a scientific person happened to see a locomotive engine coming down an inclined plane, with a tolerable weight behind it, and he found that the strokes were reduced from fifty to twelve, as soon as the wind acted upon it; so that every gale that would produce an interruption to the intercourse by the canals, would prevent the progress of a locomotive engine, so that they have no advantage in that respect.”