A History of the English Railway: its Social Relations and Revelations. By John Francis. 2 vols. London.

A good many years ago, a late correspondent and writer in this Magazine, Dr M'Nish of Glasgow, published a work entitled The Anatomy of Drunkenness. The book was an excellent one: most perfect in its portraiture of the different phenomena which accompany and succeed a debauch; and in the hands of a regular tee-totaller, it was undeniably worth some reams of vapid sermons. The preacher, who never, we are bound to believe, had experienced the vinous or spirituous excitement in his own person, was enabled from it to hold forth, with all the unction of reality, to his terrified audience, upon the awful effects of intemperance. Old ladies, who rarely in their lives had transgressed beyond a second glass of weak negus at some belated party, when whist or commerce had been suggested to while away the weary hours, listened to the warnings of the gifted apostle of temperance, and hied them home in the tremendous conviction that they had only escaped, by the merest miracle, the horrors of delirium tremens. Dyspeptic gentlemen were rendered wretched, as they reflected that, for years past, they had been accustomed to wash down their evening Finnan haddock, or moderate board of oysters, with a pint of Younger's prime ale, or, mayhap, a screeching tumbler. The enormity of their offence became visible to their eyes, and they incontinently conceived amendment.

But we doubt very much whether the Anatomy would have been pleasant reading to a gentleman who overnight had imbibed "not wisely but too well." How could he bear to be told, not only of the sensations of the previous evening, minutely traced through the gradations of each consecutive decanter, but of the state of thirst and unnatural discomfort to which he was presently a victim? Would it relieve his headach to assure him that, after swallowing three bottles of claret, most men are apt to be out of sorts? Could he, the sufferer, derive any assuagement of his pains by knowing—if he did not know it already—that unlimited brandy and water, however agreeable during consumption, was clearly prejudicial to the nerves? Sermons may come too soon. The sufferer ought to be allowed at least a day or two to recover, before his offence is laid before him in all its huge deformity. Give him time to be ashamed of himself. A man's own conscience is his best accuser; and, unless the vice be absolutely inherent, or totally beyond the hope of remedy, his own misery will be more likely to effect a cure than any amount of philosophical dissertations upon its nature.

These thoughts have been irresistibly suggested to us by a perusal of the two ponderous tomes of Mr Francis, entitled, A History of the English Railway: its Social Relations and Revelations. A more unfortunate kind of apocalypse could hardly have been hazarded at the present time. Most people are tolerably well aware, without the aid of Mr Francis, of the changes in social relations which have been worked by the British railway; and as for revelations, a good many would give a trifle to have these entirely suppressed. We have not yet arrived at the time when the history of the "'45" of this century can be calmly or dispassionately written. Too many of us, still remanent here, have burned our fingers, and too many of our kith and kin have been sent to exile, in consequence of that notable enterprise. Since the standard was last unfurled in the vale of Glenmutchkin, a considerable number of the population have been bitten by the sod, if they did not literally bite it. That system of turning over turfs, by the aid of silver spades and mahogany wheelbarrows, was more fatal to the peace of families than the accumulation of any number of Celtic bagpipers whatever. It was a grand interment of capital. Who has forgotten the misery of those times, when letters of railway calls arrived punctually once a quarter? Two pound ten per share might be a moderate instalment; but if you were the unfortunate holder of a hundred shares, you had better have been boarded with a vampire. Repudiation, though a clear Christian duty to yourself and your family, was utterly impossible. It mattered not that the majority of the original committeemen and directors had bolted; you, the subscriber, were tied to the stake. The work was begun, the contracts opened, and money must be had at all hazards and sacrifices. You found yourself in the pitiable situation of an involuntary philanthropist. Threescore hulking Irish navvies were daily fed, liquored, and lodged at your expense. Your dwindling resources were torn from you, to make the fortunes of engineers and contractors. So long as you had a penny, or a convertible equivalent, you were forced to surrender it. Your case was precisely similar to that of the Jew incarcerated in the vaults beneath the royal treasury of King John. One by one all your teeth were drawn. If you managed to survive the extraction of the last grinder, and to behold the opening of the line, your position was not one whit improved. Dividend of course there was none. That awful and mysterious item of charge, "working expenses," engulfed nearly the whole revenue. What was over went to pay interest on preference debentures. That gallant body of men, the directors, laid before you, with the utmost candour, a state of the affairs of the company; from which it appeared that they had exceeded their borrowing powers by perhaps a brace of millions, and had raised the money by interposing their own individual security. These obligations you were, of course, expected to redeem; and an appeal was made to your finer feelings, urging you to consent to a further issue of stock!

It is no great consolation to the men who have suffered more woes from the railways, than fell to the lot of the much-enduring Ulysses from the relentless anger of the deities, to know that they have rendered perfect a vast chain of internal communication throughout the country. We doubt whether the Israelites, who built them, took any especial pride in surveying the pile of the pyramids. The gentleman in embarrassed circumstances, who is pondering over the memory of his perished capital, is not likely to feel his heart expand with enthusiasm at the thought that through his agency, and that of his fellows, thousands of bagmen are daily being whirled along the rails with the velocity of lightning. He may even be pardoned if, in the sadness and despondency of his soul, he should seriously ask himself what, after all, is the use of this confounded hurry? Is a man's life prolonged because he can get along at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour? Is existence to be measured by locomotion? In that case Chifney, who passed the best part of his life in the saddle, ought to have been considered as a rival to Methuselah, and a stoker on the Great Western lives in one week far longer than the venerable Parr! Is enjoyment multiplied? That, too, will admit of a serious doubt. In a railway carriage you have no fair view of the fresh aspect of nature: you dash through the landscape—supposing that there is one—before its leading features are impressed upon your mind. There is no time for details, or even for reflection. You must accommodate your thought to your pace, otherwise you are left behind, and see nothing whatever for at least a couple of stations. But for the most part your way lies between embankments and cuttings, representing either sections of whinstone, or bare banks of turf, dotted over with brown patches, where the engine has effected arson. Even furze will not willingly flourish in such an uncomfortable locality. Then you roar through tunnels, the passage of which makes your flesh creep—for you cannot divest yourself of a horrid idea that you may possibly be encountered in the centre of the darkness by an opposing engine, and be pounded into paste by the shock of that terrific tilt; or that a keystone of the arch may give way, and the whole train be buried in the centre of the excavated mountain. Sensual gratification there is none. If you do not condescend to the iniquity of carrying sandwiches along with you—in which case your habiliments are certain to be grievously defiled with buttered crumbs—you are driven by the pangs of sheer hunger into the refreshment-room at some station, and find yourself at the bar of an inferior gin-palace. Very bad is the pork-pie, for which you are charged an exorbitant ransom. Call ye this sherry, my masters? If it be so, commend us for the future to Bucellas. The oranges look well outside, but the moment you have penetrated the rind, you find that they have been boiled and are fozy. Do not indulge in the vain hope that you may venture on a glass of anything hot. Hot enough you will find it with a vengeance; for, the instant that you receive the rummer, the bell is sure to ring, and you must either scald your throat by gulping down two mouthfuls of mahogany-water raised to a temperature which would melt solder, or consign the prepaid potion to the leisure of the attendant Hebe. Smoking is strictly prohibited. Even if you are alone in a carriage, you cannot indulge in that luxury without rendering yourself liable to a fine; and, if your appetite should overcome your prudence, and you should venture to set the law at defiance, before you have inhaled two whiffs, a railway guard appears as if by magic at the window—for those fellows have the scent of the vulture, and can race along the foot-boards as nimbly as a cat along a gutter—and you are ordered to abandon your Havanna. Under such circumstances, literature is a poor resource. You read the Times twice over, advertisements and all, and then sink into a feverish slumber, from which you are awakened by a demand from a ruffian in blue livery, with a glazed leather belt across his shoulder, for the exhibition of your ticket. Talk of the inconvenience of passports abroad! The Continental system is paradisaical compared with ours. At length, after fingering your watch with an insane desire to accelerate its movement, you run into the ribs of something, which resembles the skeleton of a whale—the train stops—and you know that your journey is at an end. You select your luggage, after having undergone the scrutiny of a member of the police force, who evidently thinks that he has seen you before under circumstances of considerable peculiarity, ensconce yourself in a cab, and drive off, being favoured at the gate of the station by a shower of diminutive pamphlets, purporting to be poetical tributes to the merits of Messrs Moses and Hyams. You have done the distance in twelve hours, but pleasure you have had none.

Mr Francis, who is gifted with no more imagination than an ordinary tortoise, though he asserts the superiority of the hare, begins his book with an exceedingly stupid dissertation upon the difficulties of ancient travel. Broken bridges, impassable quagmires, and ferocious highwaymen constitute leading features in his picture; and, as you read him, you marvel, between your fits of yawning, what manner of men our ancestors must have been to brave so many dangers. Sheer drivel all of it! The old roads were uncommonly good, and the bridges kept in splendid repair from the time they were built by the Romans. Who ever heard of a quagmire on a turnpike? As for a casual encounter with Turpin, Duval, or any other of the minions of the moon, we are decidedly of opinion that such incidents must have added much to the excitement of the journey. A stout fellow, well mounted, usually carried about him both pops and a cutlass, and, if he was cool and collected, might very easily square accounts with the most ardent clerk of St Nicholas. Does Mr Francis really suppose that the author of Jack Sheppard likes railway travelling? Not he. Dearer to his soul is a prancing prad upon Hounslow Heath than all the engines that ever whistled along a line. Mount him upon Black Bess, arm him with a brace of barkers, and in the twinkling of an eye there would be daylight through the carcase of the Golden Farmer. Is adventure nothing? Had the road no joys? Are we to consider the whole universe worthless, except those black dots which in the maps represent cities? Was nature made in vain, in order that men might hasten from town to town, at the tail of a shrieking engine, regardless of all the glorious scenery which intervenes? To our taste, the old mode of travelling—nay, the oldest—was infinitely superior to the present sickening system. You rose by times in the morning; took a substantial breakfast of beef and ale—none of your miserable slops—and mounted your horse between your saddle-bags, in time to hear the lark carolling on his earliest flight to heaven. Your way ran through dingle and thicket, along the banks of rivers, skirting magnificent parks, rich in the possession of primeval oaks, under which the deer lay tranquilly and still. You entered a village, stopped at the door of the public-house, and cooled your brow in the foam of the wholesome home-brewed. You dined at mid-day, in some town where the execrable inventions of Arkwright and Watt were unknown; where you encountered only honest, healthy, rosy-cheeked Christians, who went regularly once a-week to church, and identified the devil with the first dissenter—instead of meeting gangs of hollow-eyed lean mechanics, talking radicalism, and discussing the fundamental points of the Charter. You moved through merry England as a man ought to do, who is both content with his own lot and can enjoy the happiness of others. As you saw the sun rising, so you saw him set. The clouds reddened in the west—you heard the sweet carol of the thrush from the coppice, and lingered to catch the melody. The shades of evening grew deeper. The glow-worms lit their tiny lanterns on the bank, the owl flitted past with noiseless wing, the village candles began to appear in the distance; and as you dismounted at the door of your humble inn, and surrendered your weary beast to the hands of the careful hostler, you felt that you were the richer by a day spent in the fresh air and gladsome sunshine, and made happy by all the sounds and sights which are dear to the heart of man.

But this was solitary travelling, and might not suit every one. Well—if you were a little fellow, deficient in pluck, and sorely afraid of robbers, you might have company for the asking. At every large inn on the road there were at least a dozen travellers who, for the sake of security, agreed to journey in company. Was that no fun? Have you anything like it in your modern railways? Just compare your own experiences of a rocket-flight along the Great Western with Chaucer's delineation of his Canterbury pilgrimage, and you will see what you have lost. Nice sort of tales you would elicit either from that beetle-browed Bradford Free-Trader, evidently a dealer in devil's-dust, who is your vis-À-vis in the railway carriage; or from that singular specimen of a nun who is ogling you deliberately on the left! Can you associate the story of Palamon and Arcite—can you connect anything which is noble, lofty, inspiriting, humane, or gentle, with a journey made in an express train? If not, so much the worse for the present times. Doubtless you may hear something about Thompson or Bright, but we may be excused if we prefer the mention of the earlier heroes. Also, you may pick up information touching the price of calicoes, or the value of stocks, or the amount of exports of cotton twist—and we wish you much good of all that you get. But, O dear, is that travelling? Would you like to go from London to Ispahan in such company? How long do you think you could stand it? And yet this is the improved system of locomotion for which we are told to be thankful, and in honour of which such weariful volumes as those of Mr Francis are written.

"But, mercy on us!" we hear Mr Francis or some of his backers exclaim—"is it nothing that commercial gentlemen can now make four trips a-day between Manchester and Liverpool, and do a stroke of business on each occasion?" We reply, that it would be better for the said commercial gentlemen, both here and hereafter, if they would content themselves with a more moderate pursuit of Mammon. Happiness in this life does not depend upon the amount of sales effected. The assistant in the London grocer's shop, who daily ties up a thousand packages of tea and sugar, is not greatly to be envied beyond his brother in the country, who twists the twine around fifty. We have an intense respect for work while kept within wholesome limits; but we cannot regard the man whose sole pursuit is grubbing after gold as otherwise than an ignominious slave. The railways are in one sense excellent things. You can get from point to point, if necessity requires it, much sooner than before, at less cost, and perhaps with less inconvenience. But there the advantage ends. There is no pleasure in them; and, compared with former methods of locomotion, they are decidedly less healthy and less instructive. We decry them not. We only wish to stop the babbling of the blockheads who would have us to believe that, until the steam-engine was invented, this earth was an unendurable waste, a wilderness of barbarians, and an unfit residence for civilised and enlightened man. Would the genius either of Shakspeare or Newton have been greater had they known of the rails? Would the splendour of the reign of Elizabeth have been heightened had Stephenson then existed?

The admiration of Mr Francis for the railway system is so intense as to be purely ludicrous. He considers every man connected with its development—whether as engineer, contractor, or director—as a positive public hero; and this work of his seems intended as a kind of Iliad, to chronicle their several achievements. Since we last met, Mr Francis has been hard at work upon his style. Formerly he went along, pleasantly enough, without any great effort: now he is not satisfied unless he can eclipse Mr Macaulay. He has read the History of England to some purpose. Fascinated by the brilliancy of the sketches which the accomplished historian has drawn of the statesmen of the age of William of Orange, Mr Francis thinks he will not do justice to his subject unless he adopts a similar mode of handling. Unfortunately he has no statesmen to celebrate. But he can do quite as well. There are surveyors and contractors by the score, whose portraits in his eyes are just as interesting. Accordingly, we have a repetition of the old scene in the play. A voice without is heard calling, "Francis!" To which summons Francis incontinently replieth, "Anon, anon, sir!" and then—"Enter Poins, Peto, Gadshill, and the rest." No loftier apparition ever comes upon the stage; but we are warned that, in surveying these, we look upon individuals destined in all coming time to occupy a lofty niche in British history. Thus, to quote at random from the index, we have the following entries—"Richard Creed ... his services and character." "Who may this Mr Richard Creed be?" says the unconscious reader; "we never heard of him before!" "Fool!" quoth Francis, "he was the Secretary of the London and Birmingham line! 'On his honesty and integrity,' said Mr Glyn on one occasion emphatically, 'I pin my faith, and you may pin yours also!'" And he adds, referring to an occasion which must have been exceedingly gratifying to the feelings of the recipient—"The testimonial to this gentleman, in 1844, was worthy the munificence of the givers. It is not often that a cheque for two thousand one hundred guineas accompanies an expression of opinion, or that the rich man's praise fructifies into a service of plate." As we contemplate our unadorned sideboard, we acknowledge the truth of this remark; still, we hesitate to exalt Mr Creed to the rank of a hero. Then we light on "Undertakings of Thomas Brassey.... Anecdote concerning him." Mr Brassey is a contractor, eminent no doubt; but so, in his own age, must have been the Roman gentleman who undertook the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, though his name has unfortunately perished. Then appears "Henry Booth.... His services." We trust they were properly acknowledged. Then, "Personal sketches of Mr Locke and Mr Chaplin." We are greatly edified by the silhouettes. "Personal sketch of Samuel Morton Peto." We shall try, if possible, not to forget him. Much as Mr Francis has done to perpetuate the memory of these great men, it is plain that his powers have been cramped with the space of two thick octavo volumes. In order to make his Iliad perfect, we ought to have had a catalogue of the chiefs of the navvies. But we must rest satisfied with the acute remark of Herder, that "the burden of the song is infinite, but the powers of the human voice are finite." Mr Francis has done what he can. Creed and Brassey—Brunel and Locke—Chaplin, Peto, and Vignolles, live within his inspired volumes; and we beg to congratulate them on account of that assured immortalisation. They are the salt of the earth. The compilers of traffic-tables have disappeared—the old standing witnesses before committees of the House of Commons are dumb—the young engineering gentlemen, who could do anything they pleased in the way of levelling mountains, are amusing themselves in California or elsewhere—even the mighty counsel, the holders of a hundred briefs, for which, for the most part, they rendered but indifferent service, are unsung. But the others live. In the British Valhalla they are assured of an adequate niche, thanks to Mr Francis, who, as Captain Dangerfield says, is ready to stake his reputation that they are the only men worthy of record in such an enlightened age as our own.

No—we are wrong. The man of all others to be deeply venerated is "George Carr Glyn, Esq., Chairman of the London and North-Western Railway," to whom these volumes are respectfully dedicated. Of Mr Glyn's career as a statesman we know absolutely nothing. We are not even aware to what section of politicians he belongs, so utter is our ignorance of his fame. As we read the pages of Francis, and encountered the continual eulogiums heaped upon this gentleman, we felt remarkably uncomfortable. We could not divest ourselves of the notion that we had been asleep for some quarter of a century, and had therefore missed the opportunity of witnessing the appearance of a new and most brilliant star in the political horizon. About Mr Glyn, Francis has no manner of doubt. He is not only the most sagacious, but the most clever personage extant, for every purpose which can smooth railway difficulties. He is the Ulysses of his line, and can rap Thersites on the sconce, if that cynical fiend should insist upon an awkward question. We really and unaffectedly ask pardon of Mr Glyn, if we mistake him through his eulogist. We have no other means of knowing him; and therefore he must settle the correctness of the following sketch with Mr Francis, who appears as the voluntary artist. If the drawing is to the mind of Mr Glyn, and if it meets his ideas of ethics, we have nothing in the world to say against it, having no interest whatever in the line over which he presides. Hear Francis: "The proper place to see Mr Glyn is as chairman in that noble room, where, with an earnest multitude around him, with the representative of every class and caste before him—with Jew and Gentile ready to carp at and criticise his statements—he yet moves them at his pleasure, and leads them at his will. And perhaps the ascendency of one man over many is seldom more agreeably seen than when, standing before a huge expectant audience, he enlivens the platitudes of one with some light epigrammatic touch, answers another with a clear tabular statement, or replies to a third with some fallacy so like a fact that the recipient sits contentedly down, about as wise as he was before." This is, to say the least of it, an equivocal sort of panegyric. We all know what is implied by the term "fallacies" in railway matters, and some of us have suffered in consequence. According to our view, this interchange of fallacies between directors and shareholders is a custom by no means laudable, or to be held in especial repute. In pure matters of business, the less frequently fallacies are resorted to, the better. They are apt, in the long run, to find their way into the balance-sheet—until, as we have seen in some notorious instances, the assumed fact of a clear balance, to be applied by way of dividend, turns out also to be a fallacy. In the case before us, we are willing to believe that Mr Francis is altogether mistaken, and that the statements of Mr Glyn, made in his official capacity, which appeared to the blundering reporter to be fallacies, were in reality stern truths. But what sort of estimate must we form of Mr Francis' moral perception, when we find him selecting such a trait as the subject of especial commendation? He has, however, like most other great men, large sympathies. He does battle in behalf of Mr Hudson with considerable energy; though, after all, taking his conclusions as legitimate, his defence simply resolves itself into this—that Mr Hudson's conduct was not more blamable than that of others. So be it. We never joined in the wholesale censure directed against the quondam railway monarch, because we knew that the whole tone of the morals of society had been poisoned by the villanous system engendered by railway speculation; and because we saw that many of his accusers, if their own conduct had been sifted, might have been arraigned equally with him at the bar of public opinion. Therefore we have no desire to interfere with the operations of Mr Francis, when he appears with his pot of whitewash. Nay, we wish that the implement were more roomy than it is, and the contents of less questionable purity—for assuredly he has a large surface of wall to cover, if he sets himself seriously to the task of obliterating the traces of past iniquity.

The reader, however, must not suppose that Mr Francis sees nothing to condemn, or that he has not at command thunderbolts of wrath to launch at the heads of offenders. According to him, the most painful feature of the railway system was the rapacity of the owners of the soil in driving hard bargains for their land. As this is a charge which has often been made by men more competent to form an opinion upon any subject than the gentleman whose work we are now reviewing, we shall condescend to notice it. Let us premise however, that, in this matter, the howl is distinctly traceable to the harpies who inveigled the public to join their nefarious schemes, and to advance their capital on the assurance of enormous dividends.

After referring to the negotiations made with landowners by the promoters of the London and Birmingham line, Mr Francis comments as follows:—

"These things are written with pain, for they display a low tone of moral feeling in that class which, by virtue of inheritance, of birth, and blood, should possess a high and chivalrous sense of honour. The writer is far from wishing to blame those who honestly opposed the rail. The conscientious feeling which prompts a man, even in an unwise action, if mistaken, is at least respectable. There is much to palliate the honest opposition of the landowner. Scenes and spots which are replete with associations of great men and great deeds cannot be pecuniarily paid for. Sites which bear memories more selfish, yet not less real, have no market value. Homes in which boyhood, manhood, and age have been passed, carry recollections which are almost hallowed. Such places cannot be bought and sold; nor are the various prejudices which cling to the country to be overlooked. If the nobleman disliked the destruction of his fine old English park, the yeoman deplored the desecration of his homestead. The one bore its splendid remembrances, the other its affectionate recollections. If the peer hallowed the former for the sake of its royal visits, the farmer cherished the latter for the sake of those who had tilled the land before him. There are fancy spots in this our beautiful England which it would pain the most indifferent to destroy; what then must be the feelings of those who have lived, and only wish to die there?

"It is the trafficker in sympathies, it is the dealer in haunts and homes, at whom the finger of scorn should be pointed. It is the trader in touching recollections, only to be soothed by gold, that should be denounced. It is the peer who made the historic memories of his mansion a plea for replenishing an impoverished estate; it is the farmer who made the sacred associations of home an excuse for receiving treble its value; it is the country gentleman who made his opposition the lever by which he procured the money from the proprietors' pockets, who should be shamed. And a double portion of ignominy must rest upon these, when it is remembered that the money thus immorally obtained is a constant tax on the pleasures of the artisan, on the work of the manufacturer, and on the wages of the railway official."

Mr Francis, it is evident, is fighting hard for his service of plate; but we doubt much whether he will get it. He evidently considers the foregoing passage as a specimen of splendid writing. He is mistaken. It is nothing better than unadulterated drivel. Let us try to extricate, if we can, his argument from this heap of verbiage.

He admits that associations ought to be respected, but he denies that they ought to have been paid for. What does he mean by this? By whom were the said associations to be respected? By the projectors of the railway companies? Hardly: for those very sympathising gentlemen were precisely the persons who insisted upon running their rails right through park and cottage, and who would have prostrated without remorse the Temple of Jerusalem or the Coliseum, had either edifice stood in their way. What, then, was the value of that respect? Precisely the worth of the tear which stood in the eye of the tender-hearted surveyor. What was the operation of that respect? Not to spare, but if possible to destroy.

In a word, Mr Francis maintains that the railway companies ought to have had their own way in everything, and to have got possession of the land at the lowest conceivable prices. He thinks that, because gentlemen whose property was threatened with invasion, whose privacy it was purposed to destroy, and whose homes were to be rendered untenantable, demanded a high price from the joint-stock trading companies, as an equivalent for the surrender of such privileges, they manifested a "low tone of moral feeling." In fact, so far as we can gather from his language, he puts no value whatever, in a pecuniary sense, upon the associations which he admits to be entitled to respect; and hardly any, if any, upon the score of amenity. He is anything but an Evelyn. An oak, in his eyes, is merely a piece of standing timber to be measured, valued, and paid for according to the current price in the dockyards. The land—no matter of what kind—is to be estimated according to the amount of its yearly return, and handed over without farther question to the enterprising company which demands it. Perhaps Mr Francis may remember a certain passage in sacred history, narrating the particulars of a proposed transfer of ground—the parties being King Ahab on the one hand, and Naboth the Jezreelite on the other? If not, we recommend it to his attention, assuring him that he will find it to contain a very important lesson touching the rights of property. His present argument, if it is worth anything, would go far to vindicate Ahab. He wanted the other man's vineyard because it lay contiguous to his house, and he offered to give him in exchange a better vineyard for it, or an equivalent in money. According to the view maintained by Mr Francis, Naboth was not justified in refusing the offer.

But let us look into this matter a little more closely. On the one hand there is the owner of a property which has been transmitted through a long line of ancestors, and which is now to be intersected and cut up by a projected line of railway. On the other hand there is the company, which cannot progress a step until they have possession of the land. Now let us see what is the nature, and what are the objects of this company. It will not do for Mr Francis or any one else to babble about public advantages, arising from more direct communication between cities or towns of importance. Public advantage may be taken for granted as a result, but upon pure considerations of public advantage no railway whatever was undertaken. It is the commercial speculation of a private company. No man ever took a share in any railway from motives of disinterested philanthropy. He took them because he expected to make a profit by them, to hold them as a safe investment, or finally to sell them for a larger sum than he paid. A condition, and the main one, of the existence of the railway is the possession of the land, and at this point proprietors and speculators join issue. The former do not want the railway. Their wish is to preserve their property undissevered, and to be spared from the spectacle of engines roaring by at all hours of the day and night close to the bottom of the lawn. They very naturally think it a monstrous hardship that the rights of private property should be invaded by private individuals, even though acting upon an incorporated semblance, who are simply seeking their own profit; and they argue that, if the railway was required for public purposes, the government was the proper party to have undertaken its construction. But as, under the existing law, they are liable to be dragged, session after session, into a ruinous expense to oppose the demands of the capitalists, they wisely determine to make the best arrangement they can, and at all events to secure a full remuneration for the sacrifice. So the Squire, finding that the law is so conceived and modified that any one individual who is possessed of landed property may be compelled to surrender it at the demand of a hundred leagued capitalists, makes a virtue of necessity, and demands a sum corresponding in some degree to the extent of the extorted sacrifice: whereupon the promoters of the railway instantly raise such a howl that you would think somebody was trying to rob them, or to take their property by force—the case being notoriously the reverse.

Undoubtedly the Squire demands more from the railway company, as compensation for his land, than he could calculate on receiving from a neighbouring proprietor at an ordinary sale. And on what principle, in the majority of cases, does he base his calculation of value? Strictly upon that adopted by the projectors of the line. For instance, a prospectus of a railway is put out, announcing that, after the most careful consideration of district traffic, &c., the clear dividend, after clearing all expenses, must be fifteen per cent per annum to the proprietors. That is the statement of the projectors. Well, then, if such are the prospects of the concern, is it unreasonable that the land, which must be taken for its construction, and which is, in fact, to form the railway, should be valued, less on account of its productiveness, than on account of its adaptation for the peculiar purpose for which it is required? Why is an acre in the centre of a town a hundred times more valuable than an acre in a rural district? Simply because it is required for building, and the value of the land rises in just correspondence to the demand. The subsequent failure or diminution of the railway dividends cannot be made a just article of dittay against the landed proprietors. Fifteen per cent, or ten, as the case might be, was the amount of dividend which the promoters undertook to prove, to the satisfaction of Parliament and the public, as their reasonable expectation. It was part of their case always, and very often the most important part; and if they chose so to commit themselves, they were bound to pay accordingly. Just conceive a body of men addressing an urban proprietor of land, upon which no houses were yet built, in the following terms:—"Sir, we perceive you have an acre and a half of land which would be very convenient for our purpose. We propose to build a street of houses upon it, and a hotel, from the rents of which we expect to draw fifteen per cent yearly. At present your land yields you little or nothing, and therefore we wish you to dispose of it at its present value. Let us say that just now it is worth to you five pounds a-year: we shall buy it from you at five-and-twenty years' purchase!" We leave to the imagination of the reader the exact terms in which the proprietor would assuredly reply to the propounders of this reasonable request. And yet, where is the difference between the cases? The railway projector tells the landed proprietor that he desires to have his property for the purpose of securing fifteen per cent for his own money: the landed proprietor tells him that he may have the property at a rate corresponding to the advantage which he anticipates. Can anything be fairer? If Mr Francis understood even the simplest elements of political economy—an amount of mental comprehension of which we believe him to be wholly incapable—he ought to know that demand and supply are the leading conditions of price. If there is only one salmon in the London market, it will sell, as it has done before now, at the rate of a-guinea per pound, and it would be obviously unfair to charge the fishmonger with being actuated by "a low tone of moral feeling." He coerces no customer: he simply states his price, and if no one chooses to buy, no one has a right to complain. Our friend Francis seems to labour under the hallucination that everything required for a railway ought to be furnished at prime cost. That the promoters expect fifteen percent is nothing. Nay, even the free-trading rule of selling in the dearest and buying in the cheapest market is to be suspended for their behoof. The seller is to have no option: he must be cheap to them, else he is a moral monster. If, however, the judicious panegyrist of Mr Carr Glyn does not carry his principles quite so far, he lays himself open to the charge of most monstrous inconsistency. During the prevalence of the railway mania, all commodities requisite for their construction rose greatly in value. From iron to railway sleepers—in wood, metal, and everything connected with the making of the lines—there was an enormous enhancement of price. And why? On account of the demand. Was the soil on which that iron and wood was to be laid—the absolute foundation of the railway itself—to be paid for at a meaner rate? Mr Francis seems to think so; and we cannot help honouring him for the candid expression of his opinions, even while we regret the conglomeration of ideas which gave them birth. We are afraid that he has been talked over by some of his acute acquaintances. It is the fashion at railway meetings to attribute all disasters to some other cause than the mismanagement of the directors; and we daresay that Mr Francis has been fully indoctrinated with such opinions. It is not agreeable to meet shareholders with a confession of dwindled dividend. But when imperious circumstances render such a course inevitable, it is convenient to be prepared with some "fallacy" which may help to account for the fact, and to stifle too curious investigation. The readiest scapegoat is the landowner. All accounting with him is past and gone, yet he still can be made to bear the blame for a vast amount of reckless prodigality. He is not there to speak for himself—he has no connection with the company. Therefore, whenever failure must be acknowledged, the onus is cast upon him. Railway orators and railway writers alike conceal the real cause of the disaster, and combine to cast discredit and aspersion upon the gentry of England.

The truth is, that the system of railway management in this country has been, from the beginning to the end, decidedly bad. Each line, as it came into existence, was fostered by quackery and falsehood. The most extravagant representations were used to secure the adhesion of shareholders, and to procure the public support. Rival lines fought each other before the committees with a desperation worthy of the cats of Kilkenny, and enormous expenses and law charges were incurred at the very commencement. No economy whatever was used in the engineering, and no check placed on the engineers. In those days, indeed, an engineer of established reputation was a kind of demigod, whose doctrine, or, at all events, whose charges, it was sinful to challenge. But engineers have their ambition. They like viaducts which will be talked of and admired as splendid achievements of mechanical skill; and the most virtuous of the tribe cannot resist the temptation of a tunnel. Such tastes are natural, but they are fearfully expensive in their indulgence, as the shareholders know to their cost. The remuneration of these gentlemen was monstrous. In the course of a few years most of them realised large fortunes, which is more than can be said for the majority of the men who paid them. So was it with the contractors. Mr Francis tells us of many, "who, beginning life as navigators, have become contractors; who, having saved money, have become 'gangers,' realised capital and formed contracts, first for thousands, and then for hundreds of thousands. These are almost a caste by themselves. They make fortunes, and purchase landed estates. Many a fine property has passed from some improvident possessor to a railway labourer; and some of the most beautiful country seats in England belong to men who trundled the barrow, who delved with the spade, who smote with the pick-axe, and blasted the rock." With such statements before us, it is not difficult to see how the money went. Alas for the shareholders! Poor geese! they little thought how many were to have a pluck at their pinions.

Industry, we freely admit, ought to have its reward; but rewards such as these are beyond the reach of pure industry, as we used formerly to understand the term. These revelations may, however, be of use as indicating the direction in which a great part of the money has gone. We accept them as such, and as illustrations of that profound economy which was practised by the different boards of railway direction throughout the kingdom. Mr Francis, in his laudatory sketches of his favourite heroes, usually takes care to tell us that they are "sprung from the ranks of the people." Of course they are. Where else were they to spring from? Does Mr Francis suppose it to be a popular article of belief that they emerged from the bowels of a steam-engine? What he means, however, is plain enough. Judging from the whole tenor of his book, we take him to be one of those jaundiced persons who, without any intelligible reason beyond class prejudice, are filled with bile and rancour against the aristocracy, and who worship at the shrine of money. He grudges every farthing that the railway companies were compelled to pay for land; he bows down in reverence before the princely fortunes of the contractors. Every man to his own taste. We cannot truthfully assert that we admire the selection of his idols.

But what is this? We have just lighted upon a passage which compels us, in spite of ourselves, to suspect that our Francis is, at least, a bit of a repudiator, and that he would regard with no unfavourable eye another pluck at the shareholders. Here it is:—

"The assertion that land and compensation on the line to which Mr Robert Stephenson was engineer, which was estimated at £250,000, amounted to £750,000, appears to call for some additional remark; and the question which is now proposed is, how far the right is with the railroads to demand, and the passengers to pay an increased fare, in consequence of bargains which, unjust in principle, ought never to have been allowed? It is now a historic fact that every line in England has cost more than it ought. That in some—where, too, the directors were business men—large sums were improperly paid for land, for compensation, for consequential damages, for fancy prospects, and other unjust demands under various names. These sums being immorally obtained, is it right that the public should pay the interest on them? Is it just that the working man should forego his trifling luxury to meet them? Is it fair that the artisan should be deprived of his occasional trip, or that the frequenter of the rail should pay an additional tax?"

Is it fair that anybody should pay anything at all for travelling on the railways? That is the question which must finally be considered, if Mr Francis' preliminary questions are to be entertained. Because some part of the capital of the shareholders may have been needlessly expended, they ought in this view to receive a less amount of interest for the remainder! The silliness of the above passage is so supreme—the ignorance which it displays of the first rules of law and equity, regarding property, is so profound, that it is hardly worth while exposing it. It betrays an obliquity of intellect of which we had not previously suspected even Mr Francis. Pray observe the exquisite serenity with which this important personage opens his case: "The question which is now proposed!" Proposed—and for whose consideration? Not surely for that of the Legislature, for the Legislature has already pronounced judgment. Are the public to take the matter in hand, and decide on the tables of rates? It would seem so. In that case, we might indeed calculate upon travelling cheap, provided the rails were not shut up. But the whole of his remarks are as practically absurd as they are mischievous in doctrine. What right has Jack, Tom, or Harry to question the cost of his conveyance? Are there not, in all conscience, competing lines enough, independent altogether of Parliamentary regulations, to secure the public against being overcharged on the railways? On what authority does Mr Francis assume that a single acre of the land was paid for at an unjust rate? Mr Robert Stephenson's estimate, we take it, has not the authority of gospel. No engineer's estimate has. Their margin is always a large one; and it almost never happens that, when the works are completed, their actual cost is found to correspond with the hypothetical calculation. But the truth is, that the value paid for the land taken by railways is the only item of expense which cannot be justly challenged. The reason is plain. A railway company has in the first instance to prove the preamble of its bill—that is, it must show to the satisfaction of the Legislature that the construction of the work will be attended with public and local advantages. The settlement of the money question, regarding the value of the land, is reserved for the legal tribunals of the country. To complain of the verdicts given is to impugn the course of justice, and to cast discredit on the system of jury trial. Very wisely was it determined that such questions should be so adjudicated, because no reasonable ground of complaint can be left to either party. The decision as to the value of the land, and the amount of compensation which is due, is taken from the hands both of Ahab and Naboth, and their respective engineers and valuators, and intrusted to neutral parties, whose duty it is to see fair play between them.

We have done with this book. It has greatly disappointed us in every respect. As a repertory of facts, or as a history of the railways, it is ill-arranged, meagre, and stupid; and the sketches which it contains are so absurdly conceived, and so clumsily executed, that they entirely fail to enliven the general dulness of the volumes. At the very point which might have been rendered most interesting in the hands of an able and well-instructed writer—the period of the great mania—Mr Francis fails. His pen is not adequate to the task of depicting the rapid occurrences of the day, or the fearful whirl which then agitated the public mind. In short, he is insufferably prosy throughout the first four acts of his drama, and makes a lamentable break-down at the catastrophe. His work will fail to please any portion of the public, except the heroes whose praises he has sung. He has given them sugar, indeed; but, after all, it is a sanded article. We hope they will combine to buy up the edition, and thus fulfil the prophecy of Shakspeare—"Nay, but hark you, Francis: for the sugar thou gavest me—'twas a pennyworth, was't not?" "O Lord, sir! I would it had been two." "I will give thee for it a thousand pound: ask me when thou wilt, and thou shalt have it." "Anon, anon, sir!"