Other propositions have appeared, but they have been entirely disregarded. The evil day has been deferred, and will continue to be so; but it affects all good citizens to bear in mind that it must eventually arrive; and some future historian will record that the ruin of England arose from the greatness of her national debt, because her citizens were deficient in that abnegation of self which alone could grapple with a great difficulty, save a great country, and alleviate the sufferings of a patient and enduring people.
In 1817, the ministry debated the advisability of altering the mode of registering the accounts of the national debt. Many complaints had been made by bankers and merchants, of the long period employed by the Bank of England in preparing for the payment of the dividends; and they contended that six weeks were unnecessary; or, if necessary, that some new method should be tried by which the annoyance might be remedied.
The suggestion was taken into consideration, and the system of debentures very generally debated. After much mature thought, it was decided that, though the plan answered very well with foreign securities, the English debt was too gigantic, and the plan would involve too great a risk to be entertained. After much discussion in the journals, and a few questions in the House, the idea was abandoned; nor was it until thirty years from the above time, that the objection of the bankers was met; and, by the arrangements of Mr. William Ray Smee, now in operation at the Bank of England, the stocks closed only three instead of six weeks.
CHAPTER XIII.
Progress of Invention.—Public Roads.—Steam.—Duke of Bridgewater.—Canals.—Railroads.—Thomas Gray, their Pioneer.—His Difficulties.—Proposals for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.—Monopoly of the Canals.—Parliamentary Inquiry.—Extraordinary Opinions of Witnesses.—The Claims of Thomas Gray.—Value of Canal Property.
It is not unworthy of remark, that many of the greatest efforts of intellect are within the scope of the writer; as most of those works which have from time to time benefited the world, both socially and physically, have been assisted by the money power of England. Nor will the inquirer be backward in comparing the singular difficulties with which all inventions requiring great capital contended in the last century, with the remarkable facility which marks their progress in the present, if they fairly promise, as most grand inventions do, to interest the entire community, and pay ten per cent.
The annals of invention have ever been those of opposition; and the history of locomotion has been singularly illustrative of this. The journey from city to city, and from county to county, was once painfully slow. It is a subject of ridicule in the present day. A great feature with novelists, a few years ago, was to represent the incidents of a long inland journey. The memory of the reader will at once recur to “Tom Jones,” to “Humphrey Clinker,” and to the humorous scene drawn by the modern master of fiction in the opening chapter of “The Antiquary,” as some illustration of the liabilities of the traveller.
It is easier to ridicule than to reason, and safer to prophesy defeat than to predict success. The minds of the mass generally depreciate that which is beyond them; some fancy that they elevate themselves by lowering others; while the many, who bigotedly view all change as evil, doggedly refuse to acknowledge the good till they reap the fruit; and it is probable that the loudest grumbler in the railway-carriage of the present day was the loudest declaimer against locomotives a quarter of a century ago.
When the turnpikes were extended from the metropolis to the country, many of the counties petitioned Parliament against so heinous an attempt upon vested rights. The rustic gentleman grew eloquent upon the subject of rendering London accessible, and drew pictures of desolation, in which the grass was to grow in the streets, in which rents were to be reduced, cultivation was to be lowered, and the producer ruined. The toll-bars of the newly-made roads in the eighteenth century were torn to the ground, and the blood of a prejudiced people was shed in their defence. The first “flying coaches,” though six days were employed to do that which is now done in six hours, were met with invectives. It was said that they would be fatal to the breed of horses and the art of horsemanship; that saddlers and spurriers would be ruined; that the inns would be abandoned; and, above all, the Thames, as the great nursery of our seamen, would be destroyed. The post, that grand social benefit, was denounced, in Charles II.’s reign, as a Popish contrivance; and the first attempt to light the streets—an attempt which only made darkness visible—was vehemently attacked.