Being a foreigner, I could not see Messrs Bolton and Watts's great works at Soho, which are the boast of Birmingham, and indeed of England. As these extraordinary men have by the invention of the steam-engine produced so great a change upon the commercial system, and thereby upon society in this country, I could have wished to have seen their own establishment; but it was in vain, and I did not choose by making the trial to expose myself to the mortification of a refusal.
LETTER XXXVII.
Mail Coaches.—Mr Palmer ill-used.—Vicinity of Birmingham.—Collieries on fire.—Stafford.—Stone.—Newcastle-under-Line.—Punishments for Scolding.—Cheshire.—Bridgewater Arms at Manchester.
Friday, July 9.
The mail coach which communicates between Bristol and Manchester, leaves Birmingham at a reasonable hour in the morning. These coaches travel at a rate little short of two leagues in the hour, including all stoppages; they carry four inside passengers, two outside; the rate of fare is considerably higher than in other stages; but a preference is given to these, because they go faster, no unnecessary delays are permitted, and the traveller who goes in them can calculate his time accurately. Every coach has its guard, armed with a blunderbuss, who has charge of the mails; he has a seat affixed behind the coach, from whence he overlooks it, and gives notice with a horn to clear the road when any thing is in the way, to bring out the horses when he approaches the end of a stage, and to be ready with the letter-bags when he enters a post-town. Guards and coachmen all wear the royal livery, and the royal arms are upon the coaches.
It is now about twenty years since this plan has been adopted. Before that time the mails were carried by a single courier, who was as long again upon the road, and at the mercy of every footpad. They are now perfectly safe; they go without expense, in consequence of the profits of the coaches: and the effect of the rapid communication has been to double that branch of the revenue which is derived from the post-office. Yet the projector has little reason to be satisfied with the justice of the nation. He stipulated for a centage upon the clear increase of revenue above a certain sum. The whole management of the post-office was intrusted to him; but there were two lords above him with higher powers and higher salaries. These places he wished to abolish as useless, not recollecting that government desires to have as many places at its disposal as possible, and, instead of wanting to curtail the number of old ones, would have been obliged to him to have invented new. In the struggle he was displaced himself: so far all was fair, as he only lost the stake for which he was playing: but advantage was taken of this to annul the terms of the contract between him and the nation, and assign him 4000l. a-year, in lieu of his per centage, which already amounted to a much larger sum, and would yearly have increased with the increasing revenue. Of course he remonstrated against this breach of public faith; the cause was brought before parliament, and it was absurdly argued against him, that smaller pensions than this had been deemed a sufficient reward for their victorious admirals,—as if rewards and contracts were of the same nature. The minister was against him, and parliament therefore annulled its own contract in its own favour.[5]
Before this plan of Mr Palmer's was established, the ordinary pace of travelling in England differed little from what it still is in other countries: an able-bodied man might walk the usual day's journey. Its effects have not been confined to the revenue. Other stages immediately adopted the guard, and became secure from robbers; they were stimulated to rival speed, and in consequence improvements in coach-building of some kind or other are every year discovered and adopted; even waggons travel faster now than post coaches did before this revolution. Hence travelling consumes at present so much less time, and is attended by so much less fatigue, that instead of being regarded as an evil, it is one of the pleasures of the English; and people, as is our case at this very time, set out upon a journey of two hundred leagues to amuse themselves.
The morning was fair, we mounted the roof, and I looked back upon Birmingham not without satisfaction at thinking I should never enter it again. A heavy cloud of smoke hung over the city, above which in many places black columns were sent up with prodigious force from the steam-engines. We rejoiced that we were travelling into a better atmosphere, but the contagion spread far and wide. Every where around us, instead of the village church, whose steeple usually adorns so beautifully the English landscape, the tower of some manufactory was to be seen in the distance, vomiting up flames and smoke, and blasting every thing around with its metallic vapours. The vicinity was as thickly peopled as that of London. Instead of cottages we saw streets of brick hovels, blackened with the smoke of coal fires, which burn day and night in these dismal regions. Such swarms of children I never beheld in any other place, nor such wretched ones,—in rags, and their skins encrusted with soot and filth. The face of the country as we advanced was more hideous that can be described, uncultivated, black and smoking. I asked the coachman from whence the smoke proceeded, and he told me the whole earth beneath us was on fire; some coal-mines had taken fire many years ago, and still continued to burn. "If you were to travel this road by night, sir," said he, "you would see the whole country a-fire, and might fancy you were going to hell!"—A part of the road which is thus undermined gave way lately under one of the stages; it did not sink deep enough to kill the passengers by the fall, but one of them had his thigh broken.
This deplorable country continued for some leagues, till we had passed Wolverhampton, the last manufacturing town in this direction. Between this place and Penkridge it improved, we were once more in an agricultural land, and beheld clean skins and healthy countenances. We passed through Stafford, the county town, a small but well-built place, of which the main trade consists in shoes; and dined the next stage beyond it at Stone. Here were formerly venerated the two martyrs Wulfold and Rufinus, who were slain by their own father Wulpher, the Pagan king of Mercia, the father of St Werburga also; who, by the merits of his children, was himself at last favoured with grace to repentance. All traces of their worship have long since disappeared; only the town derives its name from the stones which were heaped over the place of their burial. Here we entered the country of the potteries, from whence the greater part of England is supplied with common ware, and also with that finer sort called Wedgewood, after its inventor, and known all over Europe. Etruria is the name which he gave to his fabric, because the Etruscan remains were his models, and to him it is that England, and, it may be added, Europe,—for where do not the fashions of England extend?—is indebted for having familiarised to us the beautiful forms of Etruscan design.