“Of course, therefore, it’s not your petition as set forth?”
“I doant nar, zur. I zined zummit.”
“Now, answer me, do you object to this line of railway? Have you any dislike to it?”
“O, noa, zur. I shud loak to zee it kum.”
“Exactly, you should like to see it made. So you have been led to petition against it, though you are favourable to it?”
The petitioner against the Bill did not appear to comprehend the precise drift of the remark, and his only reply to the wordy fix into which the learned agent had drawn him was made in the dumb-show of scratching with his one disengaged hand (the other being employed in holding his hat) his uncombed head—an operation that created much
laughter, which was not damped by the Agent’s putting, with a serious face, a concluding question or remark to him to the effect that he presumed he (the witness) had not paid, or engaged to pay, so many guineas a day to his friend on the other side for the prosecution of the opposition against the Bill—had he; yes, or no? The witness’s appearance was the only and best answer.
The petition, of course, upon this exposé, was withdrawn.
This, the substance of what actually took place before one of the Sub-Committees on Standing orders will give some idea of the nature of many of the petitions against Railway Bills, especially on technical points. It will serve to show in some measure what heartless mockeries these petitions mostly are; the moral evils they give birth to—and that, even while complaining of errors, they are themselves made up of falsehood.