The accompanying illustration from Punch (18 Oct.) justly holds up to ridicule the Railway Mania, which might then be said to have been at its height. It is called “The March of Speculation.—‘This is the young Gent, as takes my Business, Mem. I’m agoin’ into the Railway—Director Line myself.’”

As a proof of this Madness, see this paragraph: “Oct. 25. During the past week there were announced, in three newspapers, eighty-nine new schemes, with a capital of £84,055,000; during the month, there were 357 new schemes announced, with an aggregate capital of £332,000,000.”

On 17 Nov. the Times published a table of all the railway companies registered up to the 31st October, numbering 1,428, and involving an outlay of £701,243,208. “Take away,” it said, “£140,000,000 for railways completed, or in progress, exclude all the most extravagant schemes, and divide the remainder by ten, can we add, from our present resources, even a tenth of the vast remainder? Can we add £50,000,000 to the railway speculations we are irretrievably embarked in? We cannot, without the most ruinous, universal and desperate confusion.”

Here is a Parody on the situation, 1 Nov.:

“There was a sound, that ceased not day or night,
Of speculation. London gathered then
Unwonted crowds, and moved by promise bright,
To Capel Court rushed women, boys and men,
All seeking railway shares and scrip; and when
The market rose, how many a lad could tell
With joyous glance, and eyes that spake again,
’Twas e’en more lucrative than marrying well;—
When, hark, that warning voice strikes like a rising knell.

Nay, it is nothing, empty as the wind,
But a “bear” whisper down Throgmorton Street;
Wild enterprise shall still be unconfined;
No rest for us, when rising premiums greet
The morn, to pour their treasures at our feet;—
When, hark! that solemn sound is heard once more,
The gathering bears its echoes yet repeat—
’Tis but too true, is now the general roar,
The Bank has raised her rate, as she has done before.

And then, and there were hurryings to and fro,
And anxious thoughts, and signs of sad distress,
Faces all pale, that, but an hour ago
Smiled at the thought of their own craftiness;
And there were sudden partings, such as press
The coins from hungry pockets, mutual sighs
Of brokers and their clients. Who can guess
How many a “stag” already panting flies,
When upon times so bright, such awful panics rise?”

Mr. Francis, in his History of the English Railway, says: “The daily press was thoroughly deluged with advertisements; double sheets did not supply space enough for them; double doubles were resorted to, and, then, frequently, insertions were delayed. It has been estimated that the receipts of the leading journals averaged, at one period £12,000 and £14,000 a week, from this source. The railway papers, on some occasions, contained advertisements that must have netted £700 to £800 on each publication. The printer, the lithographer, and the stationer, with the preparation of prospectuses, the execution of maps, and the supply of other requisites, also made a considerable harvest.

“The leading engineers were, necessarily, at a great premium. Mr. Brunel was said to be connected with fourteen lines, Mr. Robert Stephenson with thirty-four, Mr. Locke with thirty-one, Mr. Rastrick with seventeen, and other engineers with one hundred and thirteen.

“The novelist has appropriated this peculiar portion of commercial history, and, describing it, says gravely and graphically: ‘A colony of solicitors, engineers and seedy accountants, settled in the purlieus of Threadneedle Street. Every town and parish in the Kingdom blazed out in zinc plates over the doorways. From the cellar to the roof, every fragment of a room held its committee. The darkest cupboard on the stairs contained a secretary, or a clerk. Men, who were never seen east of Temple Bar before, or since, were, now, as familiar to the pavement of Moorgate Street, [279] as the stockbrokers; ladies of title, lords, Members of Parliament, and fashionable loungers thronged the noisy passages, and were jostled by adventurers, by gamblers, rogues and imposters.’

“The advantages of competition were pointed out, with the choicest phraseology. Lines which passed by barren districts, and by waste heaths, the termini of which were in uninhabitable places, reached a high premium. The shares of one company rose 2,400 per cent. Everything was to pay a large dividend; everything was to yield a large profit. One railway was to cross the entire Principality without a single curve.

“The shares of another were issued, the company formed, and the directors appointed, with only the terminal points surveyed. In the Ely railway, not one person connected with the country through which it was to pass, subscribed the title deed.