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breaches of their Zion. The proceedings of the Government and of their other friends in Parliament did their cause no good. Two months after the Disruption Lord Aberdeen's despised and rejected Bill was passed into a law-'a piece of ill-timed folly,' says Lord Cockburn, the anticipated and realized results of which were 'great discontent among the people, great caprice and tyranny in the Church Courts, great grumbling among patrons, yet no regular or effective check on the exercise of patronage. The substance of it is this:-It declares something to be law which the whole law lords, except the Chancellor Lyndhurst, declared not to be law; and Brougham, Cottenham, and Campbell said that if this were the law the Auchterarder case was wrong decided. . . It was vehemently opposed. The leading objections to it were-1st, that, as urged by the true Moderate party, it recognized a right in the people to state other objections, besides the old ones, to the morals, literature, or orthodoxy of the presentee, and thus gave them too much power; 2nd, that, as urged by the popular party, it gave the people no real power at all, but only insulted them by permitting them to state objections which the Church was entitled to trample upon, and that the condition of acting within their competency legalized the constant control of the civil court; 3rd, that, as urged by all reasonable men, it conferred great power on the Church, to which it gave that very liberum arbitrium which every party in the Church had of late denounced as new and dangerous; 4th, that, as urged by all except its authors, by making the characters of the objectors a subject of relevant inquiry, it immensely enlarged this ecclesiastical despotism, and in truth established something like a clerical inquisition. . . The Court of Session invented one new Church, and now Government has made Parliament invent another, not aware that nothing disparages ancient systems more than superseding them by offensive mushrooms. One hundredth part of the zeal for appeasing the Church that has been shown by Gov

VOL. III.

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ernment lately, if exerted a year ago, would have avoided the whole Secession. Having first broken the fabric by refusing to repair it, they now undermine what remains by attempting to prop it.'

In the course of time a more liberal and active spirit began to influence the councils of the Established Church as the old Moderate party passed away. Missionary enterprises, both home and foreign, were resumed and carried on with spirit, and new life and vigour were inspired into all its schemes. Since 1843 312 quoad sacra churches have been built or acquired by purchase or gift, with a minimum endowment of £120 a year, besides in many cases a manse; making in all 1276 churches belonging to the Establishment, of which 876 receive from the teinds an average annual stipend of £270, besides a manse and in most cases a glebe. By Act of Parliament 190 parishes, where the stipends are under £150, receive from the Exchequer an average annual grant of £57 each. By a subsequent Act forty-nine churches erected in 1826 in destitute localities in the Highlands and islands receive a stipend of £120 each from the Exchequer. In forty-one parishes in burghs the stipend of the ministers is derived from burgh funds or old local endowments. There are 156 non-parochial churches, and 120 preaching and mission stations, connected with the Established Church. The expense incurred in building and endowing the 312 quoad sacra churches has been estimated at upwards of £2,000,000. During the nine years ending 31st December, 1880, the Established Church collected for all purposes, home and foreign, £2,588,702, giving an average amount of £287,633. The amount for 1880 was £319,847, exclusive of £57,912 for seat rents, making a total of £377,760. In 1881 the Church contributed for all purposes, including collections for infirmaries, the poor, &c., by church door collections, subscriptions, donations, and legacies, and £5867 for seat rents, the sum of £340,177. The unexhausted teinds in the hands of the 10

heritors or landowners amount to £140,000 | stipends varying from £400 to £1000, and per annum.

The example of the Free Church has had a powerful influence on the United Presbyterian Church, the third largest religious body in Scotland, which had not previously been very exemplary in the support afforded to its ministers. It consists of 551 congregations, with 174,557 members in full communion. The large amount of debt on its buildings, which, prior to 1843, was a heavy burden, especially on poor congregations, has been most part paid off by means of a debt liquidation fund raised by the wealthier members of the Church. By the aid of a Manse Fund a comfortable residence has been provided for nearly all the ministers in rural districts. A stipend augmentation fund, in aid of the amount paid by congregations for the support of their ministers, has had the effect of raising the average annual stipend to £267 18s. 2d. The ministers in town congregations receive

there are very few now in any district of the country whose stipends fall below £200 a year, with a manse. A fund for the support of aged and infirm ministers has also been instituted. The Theological College has four professors and a lecturer, who have 121 students under their charge. The contributions of the denomination have for a good many years been steadily on the increase. The total income of the United Presbyterian Church for the year ending 31st December 1881 was £388,730, which is £46,991 above the income for the year 1879. The amount contributed for all purposes for the ten years ending at 31st December, 1880, has been £3,709,462, being £58,554 above the income for the ten years ending at 31st December, 1870, and giving an average annual income for each of these ten years of £370,946. The total amount raised by this Church from May, 1843, to December, 1881, has been £9,302,700.

CHAPTER III.

Origin of Railroads-George Stephenson's Locomotive-The Darlington and Stockton Line-The Liverpool and Manchester Railway-Competition for the best Engine-The 'Rocket-Multiplication of Railway projects-Opposition of the Landlords and their rapacity-Joint-Stock Companies-Railway Mania in 1845-Enormous Speculations-Attitude of the Legislature-Immense expenditure on the Trent Valley Railway and the Great Northern-Parliamentary and other preliminary expenses-Jobbery of the Railway Companies-Collapse of the Speculations-Present State and Statistics of the Railways of the United Kingdom-Influence of the Railway System-The Belgian Railways-The method of their construction-Superiority of their system-The Railway Systems of Germany, France, Austria, Russia, Spain, and the United States of America-Statistics and present condition of the American Railroads.

engine intended to use it on ordinary roads. Mr. Murdoch, of Soho, a Cornish engineer, who was the first to illuminate his house and offices with gas, was probably the first Englishman who formed the model of a steam-engine.

In 1802 Richard Trevithic, one of Murdoch's pupils, took out a patent for a steam-carriage to travel on the turnpike road, which attracted considerable attention, but was not carried out or perfected, mainly in consequence of the inventor having turned his attention to the making of another steam-engine, to run, not upon a road, but upon rails. After a short trial it was regarded as a failure, and was forgotten.

THE period of which we have been writing | who at this time constructed a locomotive was not only fertile in political and ecclesiastical controversies and changes, but witnessed also social improvements of momentous importance. Conspicuous among these was the railway system, under which the whole country has been intersected by a network of iron roads, along which hundreds of millions of travellers are every year conveyed. Railways, or as they were first called, tramways, had been employed for at least 200 years in the north of England collieries, but it was not until the year 1800 that the principle of what is now distinctively called a railroad dawned on the ingenious mind of Dr. James Anderson, whose experiments and writings contributed not a little to the improvement of agriculture in Scotland. He proposed that a line of railways, for the draught of heavy loads, should be carried along the sides of the existing turnpikes. His scheme does not appear to have attracted much attention at the time; but in 1801 an Act of Parliament -the first of its kind-was passed for making an iron railway running from Merstham in Surrey to the Thames at Wandsworth, on Anderson's plan, and another Act was passed in 1809 for a similar railroad between Cheltenham and Gloucester. These local projects, however, were merely intended to facilitate the draught of heavy loads by horses; but meanwhile experiments were being made for the application of steam to the purposes of locomotion by land, which ultimately contributed greatly to expedite the construction of railroads. The inventors

In 1813 a locomotive engine was constructed by the celebrated George Stephenson, the son of a Northumbrian collier, and at this time engine-wright to the Killingworth colliery; and to him, without doubt, belongs the credit of combining Trevithic's travelling engine with Anderson's project of a turnpike railroad for travelling purposes. It had hitherto been taken for granted that the smooth-tired wheels of the machine would not adhere sufficiently to the smooth surface of the rail, and speculators threw away a great deal of pains, money, and time in trying to surmount an imaginary difficulty. Stephenson, instead of relying on abstract theories, made the experiment which proved completely successful. In 1813 he took out a patent for his engine, which continued to work on the Killingworth Railway, but only in drawing heavy

loads at a slow rate of speed. He constructed a second and improved engine in 1816, and in 1819 he was employed by the proprietors of a colliery in the county of Durham to lay down a railway as a substitute for the waggon road on which their coals had hitherto been drawn to the river. It was completed in 1822, and five locomotives, framed under his own superintendence, were employed on the new line.

The progress of the locomotive had hitherto been very slow, but in 1821 it took a great onward start. In that year Mr. Edward Pease, a colliery proprietor near Durham, succeeded in obtaining an Act for making a railway—the first of the modern travelling class-between Darlington and Stockton. George Stephenson was appointed engineer to the new railway, and by his advice power was taken to work it by means of locomotive engines. The line was opened on the 27th of September, 1825; but the passenger traffic was at first moved by horses, one horse drawing with great ease, at the rate of ten miles an hour, twenty-six passengers, and sometimes more. It was not until the following year that Mr. Stephenson was allowed to employ his locomotive engines in this service, and even then the public were not satisfied of their general fitness for the work.

In 1825, a year fertile in projects, a company was formed for the purpose of connecting the two great towns of Liverpool and Manchester by a railroad similar to the Darlington and Stockton line. Their Bill was at first rejected, mainly through the influence of the Earls of Derby and Sefton; was renewed in the following year, with some alterations and concessions to remove the objections of landowners and ignorant and prejudiced but influential members of both Houses; and became law in 1826. Stephenson was appointed engineer; but though his locomotives had been working for ten years at Killingworth, the company were by no means certain that it would be expedient to introduce them on their railroad. He planned and executed with

consummate skill the works on this line, which he had to carry over Chats Moss, that a man could not walk upon; and at the Liverpool end he had to carry through a tunnel under the streets of that city. In 1829 the success of the railway was assured and the works so far advanced, as to require that the directors should decide the question whether the engines employed on it should be stationary or locomotive. They were induced by Stephenson to offer a reward of £500 for the best locomotive engine that could be made. Four different inventors sent engines to compete for the prize, on the 8th of October, 1829; but the 'Rocket,' constructed by Robert Stephenson, the son of the engineer, was the only one that fulfilled all the conditions of the contract, and was the undisputed winner of the reward. The double success of the railroad and the locomotive was now-under the united genius of the Stephensons, father and son-complete; and from the day of this competition may be fairly dated the accomplishment of the most important discovery of modern times. Even yet, however, the idea which had from the first suggested all the railroad projects, namely, the conveyance of goods, was still uppermost in men's minds; and no one seemed to have any notion that eventually the greatest value and surest profits of the railroad would be derived from the acceleration and cheapening of passenger travelling. It is a singular fact,' says Mr. Porter in his Progress of the Nation (1838), 'that of all the railways constructed or contemplated up to the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, not one was undertaken with a view to the conveyance of passengers.'

Railway schemes, however, now began. to increase rapidly in number. Even while the Liverpool and Manchester line was still in progress twenty-four Acts for new lines had been obtained; then followed, between 1830 and 1836, twenty-six; in 1836, twentynine; and in 1837, fifteen. There was then a lull for two or three years; but the spirit of enterprise revived in 1843, when

twenty-four Railway Acts were passed; and education and learning; for in almost every in the course of that year seventy railroads, district of the country the mere proposal constructed at an outlay of £60,000,000, to bring a railroad within five miles of a conveyed 25,000,000 passengers 330,000,000 | particular neighbourhood was sufficient to miles at the average cost of 1ąd. a mile, excite a hostile petition to Parliament, and and with but one fatal passenger accident. even to draw forth a subscription to oppose such an obnoxious project.

As soon as it became evident that efforts were about to be made to extend the railway system over the kingdom obstruction of a formidable kind was brought into operation, and every scheme had to be battled through the committees of both Houses of Parliament at an enormous cost of time and money; and a spirit of litigation, extortion, jobbing, bribery, and extravagance, disgraceful in its details and deplorable in its results, was brought into play.

There was at this time throughout the country a general hostility to railroads, the result of unreasoning prejudice and of dense ignorance as to their real nature and the ends they were intended and fitted to accomplish. The fact that the projected Stockton and Darlington line was to pass near one of Lord Darlington's fox covers raised the opposition of that powerful nobleman, and insured its rejection until the line was altered. Motives of a similar kind induced the Earl of Derby and other territorial Lancashire magnates to oppose the original scheme for a railway between Manchester and Liverpool, and compelled the directors to carry their line across an apparently impassable morass. Oxford and Eton, too, united in resisting the Bill for the construction of the Great Western Railway, and would not permit it to pass without the insertion of special clauses to prohibit a branch to Oxford and a station at Slough. Even after the line had been made, when the directors caused the trains merely to stop for the purpose of taking up and setting down passengers at Slough, they were interdicted by a Chancery order from making any pause where there is now one of the finest and best-frequented stations in England-honoured by the habitual use of the Sovereign. Proceedings of this kind were by no means peculiar to the seats of

Some allowance may be made for these foolish but honest prejudices, the result of sheer ignorance; but the superadded obstructions of cupidity and jobbery deserve the severest condemnation. The railroad companies seem to have been regarded as the lawful prey of every individual whose property they approached. The directors, as a general rule, were disposed to treat fairly, and even liberally, the landowners whose property was required for their works; but they were almost always met in a spirit of unreasonable opposition and unjustifiable extortion. In numerous cases the companies thought it prudent to submit to the most unwarrantable demands rather than venture into collision with the interests of powerful proprietors, especially members of either House of Parliament, either before committees or juries. Sums of money, varying from £5000 to £120,000, were given in numerous instances ostensibly for strips of land, but in reality for the purpose of buying off opposition. Some of the most flagrant cases of this kind obtained publicity, and drew down public reprobation. In one narrow neighbourhood it was found expedient to buy off opposition at a price which it was calculated would oblige the company to raise £15,000 per annum of additional tolls. As a general rule, the expense of obtaining land required for a railroad has been, at least, double the estimate and much more than double the fair price of the soil. On the South-Western Railway this head of expense, estimated at £90,000, actually amounted to £250,000, and this case was by no means singular.

At this period money was abundant in England, and it was difficult to find profitable employment for the rapidly-accumulating wealth of the country. The crisis of

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