THE TWO CITIES TRYING AGAIN—BUGBEARS.

One, two, three years passed by, and the Liverpool and Manchester project started up again. It was not dead, it had only slept; and the three years had almost worn out the patience of both merchants and manufacturers. Trade between the two cities must have speedier and easier transit. Trade is one of the great progressive elements in the world. It goes ahead. It will have the right of way. It will have the right way—the best, safest, cheapest way—of doing its business. Yet it is not selfish: its object is the comfort and well-being of men. To do this it breaks down many a wall which selfishness has built up. It cuts through prejudices. It rides over a thousand "can't bes" of timid and learned men. For learned men are not always practical. They sometimes say things cannot be done when it only needs a little stout trying to overcome difficulties and do them.

A learned man once said crossing the Atlantic by steam was impossible.

"For the good of the race we must have something truer than wind and tougher than sails," said trade. And it was not many years before ships steamed into every port.

"Carriages travelling at twelve, sixteen, eighteen, twenty miles an hour! Such gross exaggerations of the power of a locomotive we scout—it can never be!" cries a sober Quarterly.

"You may scout it as much as you please," rejoins trade; "but just as soon as people need cheaper, pleasanter, swifter modes of travel, it will be done;" and now the railroad threads the land in its arrowy flight.

"The Magnetic Telegraph!—a miserable chimera," cries a knowing member of parliament. "Nobody who does not read outlandish jargon can understand what a telegraph means."

"You will soon find out," answers trade; and now it buys flour by the hundred barrels, and sells grain by the thousand bushels, while fleets sail at its bidding, treaties are signed at its word, and the telegraph girdles the world.

You see trade is a civilizer, and Christian civilization makes all the difference in the world between Arabs and Englishmen.

Liverpool merchants were now fairly awake. "What is to be done?" was the question. Something. Could there be a third water-line between the two cities? No; there was not water enough for that.

Would the Bridgewater Canal increase its power, and reduce its charges? No.

A tramroad or railroad, then; there was no other alternative.

Mr. James, who was so much interested before, had failed and left the country. When he left he said to his friends, "When you build a road, build a railroad, and get George Stephenson to do it."

The Darlington and Stockton enterprise could not fail to be known at Liverpool, and a drift of opinion gradually began to set strongly in favour of the railway. People talked about it in good earnest.

"A railway!" cried the canal owners, "it is absurd—it is only got up to frighten us; it will fall through as it did before." They were easy.

"Let us go to Darlington and Killingworth, and see for ourselves," said the merchants; and four gentlemen were sent on a visit of inquiry. They went first to Darlington, where the works were in vigorous progress, though not done. It was in 1824, the year before they were finished. Here they met Stephenson. He took them to Killingworth to see "Puffing Billy."

Seeing was believing. "Billy's" astonishing feats won them completely over, and they went back to Liverpool warm for a railroad. Their clear and candid report convinced merchants, bankers, and manufacturers, who gave a verdict in its favour. Public opinion was now coming over.

Books were opened for funds. There was no lack of subscribers. Money was ready. To be sure of the safety of locomotive power, a second deputation was sent to Killingworth, taking with them a practical mechanic, better able to judge about it than themselves. The man had sense enough to see and to own that while he could not ensure safety over nine or ten miles an hour, there was nothing to be afraid of slower than that. Then a third body went. The enterprise required caution, they thought.

Yes, it did.

Having decided upon steam power, the next thing was to secure the right sort of man to carry on the work. Stephenson was that man. His energy and ability were indispensable. Before trying to get an act of parliament, the route needed to be surveyed again, and a careful estimate of expenses made.

The Stockton road done, Stephenson was free to engage in this new enterprise, his success in that proving his principles true on a larger scale.

The canal owners now took alarm. They saw there was a dangerous rival, and they came forward in the most civil and conciliatory manner, professing a wish to oblige, and offering to put steam power on their canals. It was too late. Their day had gone by.

You know the violent opposition made to a former survey. How would it be again? Did three years scatter the ignorance out of which it grew? Ah, no. There was little if any improvement. The surveyors were watched and dogged by night and by day. Boys hooted at them, and gangs of roughs threatened them with violence. Mr. Stephenson barely escaped duckings, and his unfortunate instruments capture and destruction. Indeed, he had to take with him a body-guard to defend them. Much of the surveying had to be done by stealth, when people were at dinner, or with a dark lantern at night.

When dukes and lords headed the hostility, you cannot wonder that their dependents carried it on. One gentleman declared he would rather meet a highwayman or see a burglar on his premises than an engineer; and of the two classes, he thought the former the most respectable! Widows complained of damaged corn-fields, and gardeners of their violated strawberry beds; and though Stephenson well knew that in many cases not a whit of damage had been done, he paid them for fancied injuries in hope of stopping their tongues.

A survey made under such circumstances must needs have been imperfect, but it was as good as could be made. And no time was lost in taking measures to get a bill before parliament.

A storm of opposition against railways suddenly arose, and spread over every corner of the kingdom. Newspapers and pamphlets swarmed with articles crying them down. Canal and turnpike owners spared no pains to crush them. The most extraordinary stories were set afloat concerning their dangers. Boilers would burst, and passengers be blown to atoms. Houses along the way would be burnt; the air would become black with smoke and poisoned with cinders, and property on the road be stripped of its value.

The Liverpool and Manchester bill, however, got into parliament, and went before a committee of the House of Commons to decide upon it, in March, 1825.

First its friends had to show the necessity of some new mode of travel between the two cities, and that it was not difficult to do.

But when it came to asking for liberty to build a railway and run a locomotive, the matter was more difficult to manage. And to face the tremendous opposition leagued against it, the courage of its friends was severely tried.

The battle had to be fought inch by inch.

Stephenson of course was the chief witness for locomotives. But what headway could he, an uneducated Northumbrian mechanic, make against members of parliament, backed by all the chief engineers of the kingdom. For very few had faith in him; but those few had strong faith. He was examined and cross-examined. They tried to bully him, to puzzle him, to frighten him. On the subject of locomotives his answers were clear. He declared he could drive an engine, and drive it safely, at the rate of twelve miles an hour!

"Who can believe what is so notoriously in the teeth of all experience?" cried the opposition; "the witness is a madman!"

Famous engineers were called as witnesses. What had they to say? One declared the scheme a most wild one. He had no confidence in locomotives. They were affected by the wind, the weather; with difficulty were kept on the track, and were liable to constant accidents; indeed, a gale of wind would render it impossible to start a locomotive, either by poking the fire or keeping up the steam till the boiler should burst: they could never be relied on.

The proposed route had to cross an ugly quagmire, several miles in extent, called Chat Moss, a very shaky piece of land, no doubt; and here the opposition took a strong stand. "No engineer in his senses," cried one, "would think of going through Chat Moss. No carriage could stand on the Moss short of the bottom."

"It is absurd to hold out the notion that locomotives can travel twice as fast as stage-coaches," says another; "one might as soon trust himself to a rocket as to the mercy of a machine going at that rate."

"Carriages cannot go at anything like that speed," added another; "if driven to it, the wheels would only spin on their axles like a top, and the carriages would stand stock-still!"

So much for learned arguments against it.

Then came the dangers of it. The dumb animals would never recover from the sight of a locomotive; cows would not give their milk; cattle could not graze, or horses be driven along the track, cried the opposition.

"As to that," said Stephenson, "come to Killingworth and see. More quiet and sensible beasts cannot be found in the kingdom. The farmers there never complain."

"Well," asked one of them, "suppose, now, one of those engines to be going along a railroad at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the engine; would not that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?"

"Yes," answered Stephenson, with a droll twinkle in his eye, "very awkward indeed—for the coo!"

The inquirer, as you may suppose, was silent.

The danger in other respects was thus dwelt on: "In addition to the smoke and the noise, the hiss and the whirl, which locomotive engines make going at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, and filling the cattle with dismay, what," asked an honourable member, "is to be done with all those who have advanced money in making and mending turnpikes? What with those who may still wish to travel in their own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers? What is to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and workmen, innkeepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Iron would be raised one hundred per cent., or more probably exhausted altogether. The price of coal would be ruinous. Why, a railroad would be the greatest nuisance, the biggest disturbance of quiet and comfort, in all parts of the kingdom, that the ingenuity of man could invent."