with passengers, conveyed at a rate of more than fifteen miles an hour, a speed which was largely exceeded in subsequent trials. The desideratum was at length obtained, viz., the conveyance of large masses of passengers and goods with ease and rapidity; and it was seen that the discovery must revolutionize the whole system of inland communication. The public feeling was strangely excited. Commercial men and men of enterprise were enthusiastic in favor of the new railways and eager for their introduction all over the country. But the vested interests of roads and canals, and landed proprietors who feared that their estates would be injured, together with the great body of the public, were violently prejudiced against them. Railways had to fight their way against the most strenuous opposition. I quote from the "Life of Robert Stephenson," the engineer of the London and Birmingham line: "In every parish through which Robert Stephenson passed, he was eyed with suspicion by the inhabitants, and not seldem menaced by violence. The aristocracy regarded the irruption as an interference with territorial rights. The humbler classes were not less exasperated, as they feared the railway movement would injure those industrial interests by which they lived. In London, journalists and pamphleteers distributed criticisms which were manifestly absurd, and prophecies which time has signally falsified."-Vol. i, p. 169. The city of Northampton was so vehement in its opposition, that the line was diverted to a distance of five miles, through the Kilsby Tunnel, to the permanent injury both of the city and railway. The bill was thrown out in Parliament, and only passed in the following session by the most lavish expenditure in buying off opposition. Other lines were soon obtained in spite of the same vehement hostility. The Grand Junction Railway from Liverpool to Birmingham, was passed in 1833. The Eastern Counties Railway was sanctioned in 1834. It was launched as a 15 per cent. line. It is said that a wealthy banker in the eastern counties made a will, leaving considerable property to trustees to be expended in parliamentary opposition to railways. The Great Western was thrown out in 1834, but passed in 1835. The London and Southampton, now the London and South Western, was proposed in 1832, was not sanctioned till 1834. bit In 1836 came the first railway mania. Up to this time the difficulty had been to pass any bill at all, now competing schemes began to be brought before Parliament. Brighton was fought for by no less than five companies, at the total expenditure of £200,000. The South Eastern obtained its act after a severe contest with the Mid Kent and Central Kent. Twenty-nine bills were passed by Parliament authorising the construction of 994 miles of railway. In the autumn the mania raged with the greatest violence. "There is scarcely," said the Edinburgh Review, "a practicable line between two considerable places, however remote, that has not been occupied by a company; frequently two, three or four rival lines have started simultaneously." The winter brought a crash, and the shares of the best companies became almost unsaleable. In 1845 most of the great lines had proved a success. The London and Birmingham was paying 10 per cent., the Grand Junction 11 per cent., the Stockton and Darlington 15 per cent., and railway shares were on an average at 100 per cent. premium. The railway mania broke out with redoubled violence; railways appeared an El Dorado. The number of miles then open was 2,148. The number of miles sanctioned by Parliament in the three following sessions was: Had all these lines been constructed, we should have had in 1852 more than 10,700 miles of railway, a number which was not actually reached till 1861, or nine years later. But the collapse in 1846 was so severe that an act was passed for the purpose of facilitating the dissolution of companies, and a large number of lines were abandoned, amounting, it is said, to 2,800 miles. Railway extension was now menaced with a new danger. The effect of the panic was so great, and the losses on shares so severe, that the confidence of the public was destroyed. Besides this, as the new lines were opened, the dividends gradually decreased till the percentage of profit on capital had gone down from 5 per cent. in 1845 to 34 in 1849 and 31 in 1850, leaving scarcely anything for ordinary shareholders. As a consequence, shareholders' lines were at an end. But since 1846 a new custom had been gaining ground of the amalgamation of smaller into larger companies. I may instance the North Eastern Company, which consists of twenty-five originally independent railways. In this manner eleven powerful companies had been formed, which divided the greater part of England between them. The competition between these companies for the possession of the country was very great, and by amalgamations, leases, guarantees, and preference stocks, they financed a large number of lines which otherwise could not be made. In this manner the coustruction of railways between 1850 and 1858 progressed at the rate of nearly 400 miles a year. But towards the end of 1858 the great companies had exhausted their funds and ardor, and proposed terms of peace. The technical phrase was "that the companies required rest." Again it seemed probable that railway extension would be checked. But a new state of things arose. Twenty years of railway construction had brought forward many great contractors, who made a business of financing and carrying through lines which they thought profitable. The system had grown up gradually under the wing of the companies, and it now came to the front, aided by a great improvent in the value of railway property, on which the percentage of profits to capital expended had gradually risen from 31 per cent. in 1850 to 41 in 1860. The companies also found it their interest to make quiet extensions when required by the traffic of the country. Thus railway construction was continued in the accelerated ratio of more than 500 miles a year. The following table gives a summary of the rate of progress from 1845 to 1865: During the same year the percentage of profits to capital expended were as follows: The latter table, which is abridged from an annual statement in Here. path's Journal, scarcely gives an idea of the gradual manner in which the dividends sank from their highest point in 1845 to their lowest in 1850, and of their equally gradual recovery from 1850 to 1860 and 1865. The main results of the two tables are, first, the close connection between the profit of one period and the average number of miles constructed in the next five years, and, second, the fact that the construction of railways in the United Kingdom has been steadily increasing since 1855, and is now more than 500 miles per annum. The number of miles authorized by Parliament during the last six years is stated in the Railway Times to be as follows: Hence the miles authorized by Parliament for the last six years have been double the number constructed; and there must be about 3,500 miles not begun or not completed-a number sufficient to occupy us for fully seven years, at our present rate of construction. Such is a brief summary of the history of railway extension in Great Britain and Ireland. It may be thrown into five periods : 1. The period of experiment, from 1820 to 1830. 2. The period of infancy, from 1830 to 1845. 3. The period of mania, from 1845 to 1848. 4. The period of competition by great companies, from 1848 to 1859. 5. The period of contractor's lines and companies' extensions, from 1859 to 1865. III.-DISTRIBUTION OF RAILWAYS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. The returns of the Board of Trade to the end of 1865 give the followlowing distribution of the 13,289 miles then open ;— Hence there is a considerable preponderance of double lines over single lines in England, and of single lines over double in Scotland and Ireland. The following table shows which country has the greatest lenth of railways in proportion to its area : Square Miles. Railway Mileage. per Mile of Railway. Area in Square Miles 6.25 14. 17.7 So that England and Wales have a mile of railway for every six and a half square miles of country, being the highest proportion in the world, while Scotland has less than half that accommodation, and Ireland little more than one-third. The following table shows which country has the greatest length of railway in proportion to population: Population per Population in 1860. Railway Mileage. Mile of Railway England and Wales.... Scotland. Ireland.. 20,228,497 3,096,308 5,850,309 9,251 2.200 1,838 2,186 1,409 3,182 So that Scotland, a thinly inhabited country, has the greatest railway mileage in proportion to her population, and we shall afterwards find that she stands at the head of all European countries in this respect. The manner in which this railway mileage is distributed through England deserves some attention. A railway map will show that the general direction of English lines is towards the metropolis. London is a centre to which nearly all the main lines converge. Every large town is, in its degree, a centre of railway convergence. For example, look at the lines radiating from Leeds, from Hull, from Birmingham, or from Bristol. But all those lesser stars revolve, so to speak, round the metropolis as a central sun. A great deal may be learned of the character and political state of a country from the convergence of its railway lines. Centralising France concentrates them all on Paris. Spain, another nation of the Latin race, directs her railways on Madrid. Italy shows her past deficiency of unity, and want of a capital, by her straggling and centreless railroads. Belgium is evidently a collection of co-equal cities without any preponderating focus. Germany betrays her territorial divisions by the multitude of her railway centres. Austria, on the contrary, shows her unity by the convergence of her lines on Vienna. The United States of America prove their federal independence by the number of their centres of radiation. The national character of the English nation may be traced in the same way. Though our railways point towards London, they have also another point of convergence-towards Manchester and the great port of Liverpool. The London and North Western, the Great Northern (by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire line), the Great Western and the Midland run to Manchester and Liverpool from the south. The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire railway, the London and North Western Yorkshire and Carlisle lines, and the network of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company converge on them from the east and north. The London and North Western Welsh railways and the Mid Wales and South Wales lines communicate with them from the west. Thus our railway system shows that Manchester and Liverpool are the manufacturing and commercial capitals of the country, as London is its monetary and political metropolis, and that the French centralization into a single great city does not exist in England. It remains to describe the great systems into which the English railways have been amalgamated. There are in England twelve great companies, with more than £14,000,000 each of capital, which in the aggregate comprises nearly seven-eighths of our total mileage and capital. They divide the country into twelve railway kingdoms, generally well defined, but sometimes intermingled in the most intricate manner. They may be classified into the following seven districts : 3. North Eastern District-Great Northern Railway... North Eastern Railway 4. Mersey to Humber District-Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway. 5. Eastern District-Great Eastern Railway.. 6. South Eastern District-South Eastern Railway. 7. South Western District-London and South Western which include three-fourths of the whole mileage and capital of Scotch railways. |