My authority for this statement is a newspaper article, headed "Centenary of the First Railway Act," written in 1901 by W. P. Paley, and to be found in a collection of railway pamphlets in the British Museum (08235 i 36). The name of the journal is not stated; but the writer of the article gives such precise details concerning the line in question that his information is evidently authentic.
In succeeding engines a double tube, bent in the form of the letter U, was fixed. Stephenson provided his "Rocket" with 25 tubes, thus giving a further substantial increase in the heating surface.
That this attitude of organised hostility on the part of the canal companies was well maintained is shown by the following extract from the "Manchester Advertiser" of January 30, 1836: "The proprietors of the Ayre and Calder navigation and of the Canals, have resolved to organise an opposition to all railways whatever in Parliament. The canal proprietors are thus openly setting themselves in opposition to one of the greatest improvements of the age."
See page [237].
In the Taff Vale Railway Act of 1836 (the same year as that in which Morrison made his proposals) the company were prohibited from paying a dividend of more than seven per cent when the full tolls were charged, or of more than nine per cent after the tolls had been reduced by twenty-five per cent; and the shareholders were required, at any meeting at which these maximum dividends were declared, to make such reasonable reductions in the amount of the rates to be paid during the following year as would, in their opinion, reduce the profits to the seven or nine per cent level. It was further provided that, for the purpose of "better ascertaining the amount of the clear profits upon the said railway," the company should submit their accounts to the Justices in Quarter Sessions, who were to make such reductions in the rates to be collected during the year next ensuing as would, in their judgment, reduce the profits to the prescribed minima. Mr A. Beasley, general manager of the Taff Vale Railway, who gives this information in an article on "How Parliament Harassed Early Railways," published in "The Railway Magazine" for November, 1908, adds: "The gentlemen of Quarter Sessions were never called upon to undertake this formidable task as the clauses were repealed by the Company's Act of 1840."