Mendoza, with his daughters, sought temporary exile, the embargo was soon taken off their property, and Tom Thorne afterwards sought, in the sweet smiles and flashing eye of Anita Mendoza, an exchange for the idle luxuries of cigars and champagne. Let us hope that he found them.
A. M.
LETTER FROM A RAILWAY WITNESS IN LONDON.
My dear Bogle,—In the words of the venerable Joe Grimaldi,—“Here I am again!” swearing away before the committees at no allowance. The trade is not quite so good a one as it was two years ago, when any intelligent and thorough-going calculator of traffic commanded his own price, and therefore invariably stood at an exorbitant premium. Still it would be very wrong in me to grumble. Though there is a woful defalcation of new lines, there is still a good deal to be done in the way of Extensions and Amalgamations; and I am happy to tell you that I am presently in the pay of no less than three companies, who are driving branch lines through the pleasure-grounds of different proprietors. I recollect the day when, in the exuberance of my greenness, I used to feel a sort of idiotical compassion for the situation of the men of land. I used to picture to myself the hardship of having your nice green policy cut into shreds by the forks of some confounded Junction—of seeing your ancestral trees go down like ninepins, before the axe of a callous engineer—of having sleep banished from your eyes by the roar of the engine, which sweeps past night and day, with disgusting punctuality, within fifty paces of your threshold—and of beholding some fine forenoon your first-born son conveyed a mangled corpse from the rail, because the company, out of sheer parsimony, have neglected to fence in their line, which goes slick through the centre of your garden; and the poor little innocent, in the absence of Girzy, then flirting among the gooseberries with the gardener, has been tempted to stray upon the irons in pursuit of an occasional butterfly! But I am thankful to say that I have now got rid of all such visionary scruples. Thanks to Sir Robert Peel, I have learned a new lesson in political economy. I have become a convert to the doctrine, that land is nothing else than manufactures; and I snap my fingers in derision at protection in all its shapes. Would you believe it, Bogle? I was giving evidence yesterday on behalf of the Clachandean railway—part of which, I am sorry to observe, has sunk into the centre of a bog—against a thick-headed proprietor, who has absolutely been insane enough to oppose, for three successive sessions, a branch line, which is to run through his estate for the purpose of communicating with some bathing-machines. The property has been in his family for some four or five hundred years. The mansion-house is an ordinary kind of tumble-down old affair, with turrets like pepper-boxes on the corners, and the fragment of an abbey behind it. There is no timber worth speaking of in the policy, except half-a-dozen great useless yew-trees, beneath which they show you a carved stone, that covers the dust of stout old Lord Alexander, whose body was brought home from the bloody field of Flodden;—and yet this absurd agriculturist has the coolness to propose to the company that they shall make a deviation of nearly half-a-mile, for the sake of avoiding this remnant of the darker ages! Three times, Bogle, has that man come up to London, at a most enormous expense, for the purpose of defending his property. The first time he was successful in his opposition before the committee of the House of Commons, because the chairman happened to be a person imbued with the same ridiculous prejudices as the proprietor, and was what these foolish Protectionists call a man of birth and connexion. He had on his own grounds a mausoleum with some rubbishy remains of his ancestors, who had been out with Harry Hotspur; and the moment he heard of the old tomb-stone and the yew-trees, he began to rave about desecration, and made such a row that the projectors were fain to give it up. That job cost the Protectionist proprietor at least a cool thousand; however, he was pleased to say, that he did not mind the expense, since he had succeeded in saving the mansion of his fathers. But we did not by any means intend to let him off so easily. My friend Switches, the engineer, laid out two new branches—if possible more annoying than the first, for they were to intersect one another at the yew-trees. We tipped the parliamentary notices; and, though the venerable Cincinnatus came with tears in his eyes to our directors, and offered them the land for nothing if they would only consent to a very slight and practicable deviation, we determined to make him pay for his whistle. Accordingly, next year we had him up again, all right and tight, before a fresh committee. Lord! what fun it was to hear him cross-examined by Sergeant Squashers! That’s the counsel for my money!—no feeling, or delicacy, or nonsense of that kind about him. I wish you had seen the rage of the proprietor when he was asked about his buried ancestor; whether his name was Sawney, or Sandy—and whether he was embalmed with sulphur! We all roared with laughter. “Don’t attempt to bully me, sir!” said the Sergeant,—for the red spot began to glow upon the old man’s cheek, and I believe that at that moment, if he had a weapon, he could have driven it hilt-deep into the body of the facetious barrister. “Don’t attempt to bully me, sir! thank Heaven, we are in a civilised country, where people wear breeches, and live under the protection of the law. Answer me, sir—and try to do it in something like intelligible English—was that fellow, Lord Saunders or Sawney, or whatever you call him, pickled up in brimstone or in pitch?” Squaretoes could not stand this; so he gathered himself up, I must say rather grandly—muttered something about scorn, and Squashers being a disgrace to the gown he wore, and marched out of the committee room amidst the guffaws of a group of us who were brought up to testify that the house was falling to pieces, and that no Christian, of ordinary intellect, would trust his carcass beneath its roof.
That time we had a capital chairman—a regular man of calico, who never professed to have a grandfather, hated the agriculturists like the pestilence, and had made a large fortune by the railways. He was perfectly delighted at the way in which our friend the Sergeant had put down Sir Pertinax M’Sycophant—a nickname suggested by our solicitor, and employed in the learned counsel’s reply with very considerable effect; and as there were two other members of the League on the committee, we had it all our own way. The preamble was declared to be proven, and no clauses of compensation were allowed. But, if we were obstinate in our purpose, so was Pertinax. He fought us in the House of Lords, and there, to be sure, he got what he termed justice—that is, our bill was thrown out, and some rather harsh expressions used with respect to the company’s behaviour. We were ten days before each committee—for Squashers is rather fond of spinning out a case, and none of us who are paid for attendance by the day, are in the habit of objecting to the same—so that Pertinax must have been out of pocket at least two thousand pounds by this second silly opposition. And considering that the fortunes of the family are not so flourishing as they once were, and that the old fellow can barely afford to give his son a university education, you will admit that this must have been a tolerable pull at his purse-strings. However we were determined to keep it up. The wisdom of the legislature in refusing, under any circumstances whatever, to give costs against the railways, has put it in the power of a company to drive any individual, by unremitting perseverance, to the wall. We set Switches to work again, and this time we propose to metamorphose the mansion into a station-house. I don’t know how the thing will go. Old Pertinax is fighting like a Trojan; and I rather fear that he made a little impression on the committee yesterday, by telling them that he has been obliged to borrow money upon his estate at a ruinous rate of interest, and to endanger the portions of his three pretty and motherless daughters solely to defend his patrimony from the wanton aggressions of the company. But—as Sergeant Squashers well observed, when he saw a tear stealing down the furrowed cheek of the Protectionist—this is not the age nor the place for such imbecile snivelling. We have been taught a new lesson with regard to the sacredness of rights and of property; and the sooner those antiquated hereditary notions are kicked out of the minds of the landowners, the better.
When I said, in the commencement of this letter, that I was swearing before the committees, I made use of a wrong term. We are not sworn—not even examined on soul, or on conscience, or on honour; and I must say that the recollection of that circumstance is sometimes a great comfort when I lie in bed awake of nights. What is technically termed at Westminster, engineering evidence, would, I am afraid, were an oath to be interposed, become very like the thing called perjury; which, not to mention its effect on a future state of existence, is popularly supposed in Scotland to bring one under the unpleasant but especial attention of the High Court of Justiciary. The beauty of the present system is, that it gives ample scope and rein to the imagination without imposing any restrictive fetters upon the conscience. It allows a fair latitude for that difference of opinion which always must prevail amongst professional gentlemen, and relieves them from whatever qualms they might otherwise have left in replying without any hesitation—the leading quality of a witness—to questions upon subjects of which they are utterly and entirely ignorant. I have found this advantage in my own case. I am positive that I could not, had I been on oath, have given any satisfactory evidence as to the amount of the bathing traffic on the line; though I certainly admit that I have sometimes of a Saturday afternoon sauntered along the shore with a cigar, to enjoy the posés plastiques of our northern aquatic Nereids. But as all such formality was dispensed with, I had no hesitation in stating the numbers of the amphibious animals, male and female, at eight hundred per hour during seven months of the year; which, on an average of nine hours a day, and at the rate of sixpence a head, would increase the income of the company by about £37,800 per annum. Such was one item of my evidence yesterday, for the clearness and accuracy of which I was politely complimented by the chairman. I must say, however, that I think Switches went rather too far when he valued poor Pertinax’s garden land at less than half-a-crown per acre. I can make every allowance for enthusiasm; but surely, surely this was pushing the principle a little to the extreme. One ought always to preserve, even for the sake of our employers and paymasters, some little semblance of probability. I do not object to an engineer stating in evidence that he is ready to tunnel Ben Nevis, throw a suspension bridge, over the Queensferry, or convert Lochlomond into a green and fertile meadow. All these—as Switches once observed with consummate coolness when badgered about the draining of a quicksand—are mere matters of estimate; but I like facts when we can have them; and had I been questioned on the subject, I think I should have been inclined to have allowed an additional shilling for the land.
Between ourselves, Bogle, I begin to suspect that this kind of work is not altogether conducive to the growth of a healthy state of morality amongst us, I would not say it in the hearing of our chairman; but I really do suspect that we have stretched a point or two exorbitantly far in our attempts to bolster up the bill. I know a lad who was brought up here, two years ago, to speak to the amount of minerals in a district which at present shall be nameless. He was then a good green creature, fresh from the superintendence of his mother, who—poor old body—had done her best to train him up in the ways of truth, and to instil into his mind a sound moral and religious principle. And she had so far succeeded. I do not believe that, at that time, he would have told a lie or injured a human being for the world; but evil was the day on which lie was brought up to London in order to testify before a committee. He was delivered into the hands of a big-boned Aberdonian engineer, notorious for his pawkiness and the adroit manner in which he always contrived to evade a direct answer to any hostile question whatever. The training proceeded, and in less than a month the youth was pronounced to be tolerably perfect in his paces. But he broke down upon cross-examination. He could not point out upon the map the locality of certain coal-fields which he had averred to be in existence; and a rigid heckling elicited the fact that a seam of black-band, valued at some annual thousands, was neither more nor less than a dyke of ordinary whinstone. It was clear that Jock was not yet entirely qualified for his vocation. He stammered too much—got red in the face when closely pressed, and was apt to potter with the compasses, instead of boldly measuring out his quota of imaginary furlongs. So he was remitted to his studies, and underwent another fortnight’s purification at the Coalhole and the Cyder cellars. A natural propensity for drink which lurked in his constitution, was carefully fostered, until his thirst became absolutely unappeasable. He, was drunk from morning to night, or more strictly speaking, from night till morning. His face broke out in blotches; a dark rim gathered beneath his eyes; his nose gave token of the coming pimple, and his lips were baked and bulging. A more disgusting object you never saw; and I only hope that when he was sent down after the session to Scotland, he had the common humanity not to visit the mother that bore him, for the spectacle would have broken her heart. Jock, however, had now risen in value, for he was ready to testify to any thing. To swear that black is white was nothing: he had no hesitation to depone in favour of the whole colours of the rainbow. When questioned for his employers, he was as acute and active as an eel; when under cross, he took refuge either in a stolid dulness of apprehension, which was extremely aggravating to his inquisitor, or had recourse to the safe and convenient operation of the non mi recordo system. In short, he was voted the prince of surveyor’s assistants, and his services were eagerly sought before every species of committee. Roads, canals, harbours, waterworks, or railways—nothing came amiss to Jock. Through habit he had become a quick study, and could satisfactorily master the details of the most intricate case in the course of a single evening, provided he was liberally, but not too exorbitantly, supplied with liquor. He is now a blackguard of the first water. I firmly believe that he has not spoken one word of truth for the last eighteen months, nor could he do so by any possibility even were you to pay him for it.
Such is the career of a true child of the railway committee system; nor can it well be otherwise, so long as witnesses are allowed to depone without reference to oath, and without the pains of perjury before their eyes. Don’t think me, my dear Bogle, unnecessarily strict in my censures. I make no pretence of having a conscience much less elastic than those of my fellow mortals; but I have a kind of indistinct feeling that it would be better for all of us if, somehow or another, we could be brought to speak the truth, or at least to make some sort of approximation towards it. The very first question which used to be asked of a witness in a court of law, was the remarkably suggestive one,—“Has any body paid you any thing, or promised you any thing, for giving your testimony?” And even yet, when a bribe can be established, it is held to disqualify, or at least to cast discredit upon a witness. Now, although I do not like to confess that we are bribed in the strictest acceptation of the term, we have, all of us, more or less interest in the success of the companies who are judicious enough to secure our services. The leading engineer has the prospect of a large and profitable job. The contractor expects a slice; the surveyor constant employment; and the capability-man and the calculator of traffic know very well that a break-down in evidence will effectually debar them from a future visit to London on the occasion of the next extension, which exclusion is equivalent to a loss of five guineas a-day with all expenses paid. So that, on the whole, I think it is abundantly clear, that we are not altogether patriots of the highest and most exalted breed. Why, then, should we be exempted from that species of purification to which even the peerage of the realm are subjected in a court of law? Of this I am certain, that larger interests are arbitrarily disposed of every session by committees of the House of Commons, than are painfully and laboriously adjudicated on, with all the formalities of law, by the judges of the Court of Session. And if the safeguard of an oath is deemed indispensable in the one case, I cannot for the life of me understand on what principle it should entirely be omitted in the other.
But perhaps you think that a good deal may safely be left to the discretion, discrimination, and prudence of those honourable members who are virtually the judges between the merits of the invading company and the rights of the invaded proprietor. You think that exaggerated or perverted testimony would be of no avail before a tribunal of such exalted intelligence; and that it would be as impossible to get up a fictitious case of traffic, as it would be to persuade a Birmingham trader that a metallic basis to the currency is the foundation of our national prosperity. Bless you, my dear friend! you know nothing at all about the matter. You have not the smallest idea of the extent of swallow of the Sassenach. In nine cases out of ten, they are as ignorant of the points at issue, as that unclean Whig Mr Gisborne is of the nation which he had the impudent audacity to revile. I shall put the case to you in a clear and intelligible point of view. Suppose that a company were proposing to run a line from Rutherglen across the Clyde, the Green of Glasgow, and, through the very heart of the city to the terminus near George Square. You will not deny that there are tolerably weighty interests involved in such a project as that, and I presume you would like to have the whole matter thoroughly expounded, before a locomotive train was permitted to shoot over a skew-bridge in the middle of the Trongate. Now, apart from evidence, who do you think would be the best judges of the expediency of such a measure? Are you not of opinion that the interests of Glasgow would be safer in the hands of the members for the West of Scotland, who have all some local knowledge of the place, than if intrusted to the tender mercies of five gentlemen, not one of whom has ever crossed the Border, and who, during, the whole period of their sitting, are impressed with a strong idea that Rutherglen is the same place as Rugby? Would you consider yourself, and our mutual friends Walter Sheddon, Steenie Provan, Tammy Gilkison, and Ephraim Cansh, a proper or a competent committee to try the merits of a line which was to intersect the heart of Bristol? Not one of you ever set foot in that respectable metropolis of spar; and it baffles my imagination to conceive how your aggregate wisdom could manage to detect and discriminate the truth amidst the conflicting evidence of a cloud of witnesses. Is it not a mere matter of toss-up, whether your decision would be right or wrong? Would you not be apt to abide by the testimony of the most plausible and practised witness, simply because you have no means of testing the accuracy of his deposition? But if the Rutherglen Junction were referred to the decision of you five, I warrant me we should have the business conducted in a very different kind of manner. I think I see Gilkison’s expression of face, at hearing a herring-curer brought up to speak to the value of the salmon fisheries at the Green; or the mute ire of Cansh at being told that the Trongate is a mere lane, and the buildings of no earthly value! I think I hear the obstreperous roar of Provan, consequent on the testimony of an intoxicated brass-founder, that the substratum of the Green is black band! Would not the oleaginous cheeks of Sheddon glisten with indignant dew, if he heard the Clyde described as a positive nuisance to the community?—and would not you, O Bogle, annihilate with a terrific frown, the ruffian who should aver that the finest square in Glasgow is evidently intended by nature for the purposes of a railway station? My life upon it, that you five would soon bring the witnesses to their senses. But, as the business is conducted at present, neither the judges—that is, the members of the committee—nor the counsel who are examining, know any thing at all about the localities. There is a complete monopoly in the business. Members of the English bar, who are necessarily strangers to the site of the proposed operations, are invariably employed by the solicitors in preference to our own advocates who were born and bred upon the spot. Friend Squashers, for example, was never in his life twenty miles north of the Old Bailey, and yet he is considered the fittest person to expatiate to the committee on the advantages of a Highland line. And I will say this for him, that he makes his mountains remarkably like Shooter’s Hill; and in point of bullying a witness, and insulting a landed proprietor, none of our native lads are fit to hold the candle to him.
The question, therefore, which I once put to you before, and which I certainly would put to that plucky little fellow Lord John Russell, if I happened to have the honour of his acquaintance, is simply this—Would it not be better that the evidence which is now taken before committees of the House of Commons on railway and other bills should be given in Scotland, Ireland, and the provinces, before a paid commission and on oath? Certain I am that the work would be far better done. Results would be more accurately brought out, the truth would be better sifted, and there would be an end to that profligate system of demoralisation which is doing no good to London, and is rapidly corrupting such of us as are necessarily drawn within its influence. Honourable members would be relieved from a harassing, tedious, and laborious duty; and their legislative functions need not be interfered with, as the printed evidence would fall to be leisurely and thoroughly sifted. At present a member of the House of Commons is far less a legislator than a mere railway machine. He has not time to study the merits of the vast public questions which ought above every thing to claim his attention; for his whole day is occupied with a dreary detail of curves, gradients, and sections; and by being compelled to do too much, he is crippled in the exercise and discharge of by far his most important functions. And further, the railway interest is already too widely spread in the House of Commons. Almost every member has an interest, direct or indirect, in some particular line or company; and it is impossible to expect that in every case there shall not be a particular sway or bias in the minds of some of the judges. This is not right nor decent. The leading quality which is required of a judge in every department is a strict and thorough impartiality, and an absolute renunciation of every interested motive;—and no sacrifice on the part of the public can be too great to attain so desirable an end. It would be well for us if, during the last and the preceding year, country members had been more occupied with watching the attitude and the proceedings of the ministry, and less with the conflicting statements of rival companies and engineers. Had they been attending to the Currency and the Corn Laws, we ought to have escaped from a commercial crisis, in which even the railway shareholder, as I imagine, has been tolerably severely pinched.