£197,500,000, showing an expenditure of about £33,000 ing the Great Western Railway Act was £88,710; per mile in the construction of the line, and the provision of the necessary plant and material for working." It was at first apprehended that the danger from railway travelling would be very great, in consequence of the speed and the tremendous forces brought into action. But it appears that the danger has been greatly exaggerated. "If the road is perfect," says Captain Huish; "if the engine is perfect; if the carriages are perfect, and I will go on to say, if the signal-man is perfect, and if everything about the railway is perfect, almost any amount of speed that can be got out of an engine may be done with safety." But none of these are perfect, and therefore some accidents are inevitable. The question of railway communication divides itself into two great parts: there is the great commercial principle involved; there is the great public principle of safety and convenience; and the aim of legislation should be, and has been, to bring the former principle in aid of the latter, by making it the interest of railway companies to guard, as far as human precaution can avail, against railway accidents. In the official report of the Railway Commissioners for 1849, the following comparative statement is given, from which it appears that the proportion of the number killed to those conveyed was, in 1848, 1 in 286,934, and in 1849, 1 in 316,047; while the proportion of persons receiving injury short of death was, in 1848, 1 in 264,661; and in 1849, 1 in 341,398. These proportions embrace the whole number of casualties, however arising; but if we take into the account only those cases which resulted from causes beyond the control of the sufferers, we shall find that in 1848 the killed were 1 in 2,520,034, and the injured 1 in 362,255; and that in 1849, the killed were no more than 1 in 3,192,077, and the injured 1 in 665,016. Limiting the calculation to the cases of passengers, the proportion killed from causes beyond their own control was in 1848, 1 in 6,440,087, and in 1849, 1 in 12,768,308; while the proportion injured was, in 1848, 1 in 452,818, and in 1849 1 in 760,018.

the London and Birmingham Act, £72,868; and the Eastern Counties Act, £45,190. In the earlier years of railway legislation, the legal and parliamentary expenses have varied from £650 to £3,000 per mile. In one contest £57,000 was spent among six counsel and twenty solicitors. One company alone expended in nine years, in legal and parliamentary expenses, not less than £480,000, averaging £53,300 a-year. Millions have been paid to landowners for ground, which sums have been justly said to be "so much money put into their pockets, as an inducement to allow their property to be increased in value." "Owners of estates," says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, "once the greatest obstacles to railway enterprise, have of late years been amongst its chief promoters. Since the Liverpool and Manchester line was first defeated by landed opposi tion, and succeeded with its second bill only by keeping out of sight of all mansions, and avoiding the game preserves ; since the time when the London and Birmingham Com pany, after seeing their project thrown out by a committee of peers who ignored the evidence, had to conciliate their antagonists by raising the estimate for land from £250,000 to £750,000; since the time when parliamentary counsel bolstered up a groundless resistance by the flimsiest and absurdest excuses, even reproaching engineers with having trodden down the corn of widows, and destroyed the strawberry beds of gardeners; since then a marked change of policy has taken place, nor was it in human nature that it should be otherwise. When it became known that railway companies commonly paid for land in compensation sums varying from £4,000 to £8,000 per mile; that men were indemnified for supposed injury to their property by sums so inordinate that the greater part has been known to be returned by the heir as conscience money; that in one case £120,000 was given for land said to be worth but £5,000; when it was bruited abroad that large bonuses, in the shape of preference shares and the like, were granted to buy off opposition; when it came to be an established fact that estates are greatly enhanced in value by the proximity of railways, it is not surprising that country gentlemen should have become active supporters to schemes to which they were once the bitterest enemies."

One of the most astounding chapters in the history of our modern legislation is the cost of railway acts, and their number, complexity, and contrariety. The London and North-Western Railway alone is regulated by nearly 200 different acts. In 1855 it was shown, by a return of Mr. Had- The Eastern Counties Railway Company had, up to 1846, field, that the parliamentary, legal, and engineering costs paid not less than £809,950 for land in compensation, on the then existing railways amounted to £14,000,000. equal to about £12,000 a mile. The Great Northern, howColonel Wilson Patten, in 1859, showed by a return that ever, eclipsed all others in the amount of its preliminary the parliamentary expenses alone amounted to more than 3 expenses, which, up to 1857, had reached the enormous per cent. The Trent Valley Railway Bill was lost in 1836, sum of £763,077 spent as parliamentary charges for leave because a barn worth £10, though shown in the original to construct 245 miles, being at the rate of £3,115 per plan, was not exhibited upon an enlarged sheet; 450 allega- mile, while the cost of land and compensation amounted to tions were made against it before the Standing Orders Com- nearly £2,000,000 sterling. Both charges put together mittee, and it was doubted if the ultimate cost of making give nearly £11,000 per mile of the original line, being the railway was greater than the cost of obtaining liberty nearly one-fourth of the capital forestalled before the to make it. For one line in 1845 there were eighteen ground was broken. It appeared in evidence before a comcompetitors contending before the committee. During mittee of the commons in 1858, that during the eleven that period, when the mania for speculation in rail-years from 1847 to 1857, the number of railway bills inway shares raged, railway legislation was a desperate troduced was 913, or 83 per annum, on which committees scramble between speculators, parliamentary agents, and sat 102 days per annum.

schemers of all sorts, who were encouraged by the legis- The natural results of this extravagant preliminary exlature in their ruinous proceedings. The cost of obtain-penditure have shown themselves in a variety of ways,

To 1837.]

MECHANICAL AND CIVIL ENGINEERING.

317

works; and when a serious breach occurred in the banks of the Witham, at Boston, Matthew Hake was sent for from Gravelines, in Flanders, and he brought with him not only the mechanics, but the manufactured iron required for the works. The art of bridge-building had sunk so low in England about the middle of the last century, that we were under the necessity of employing the Swiss engineer, Labelye, to build Westminster Bridge. In short, we depended for our engineering even more than for our pictures and our music upon foreigners. At a time when Holland had completed its magnificent system of water communication, and when France, Germany, and even Russia had opened important lines of inland navigation, England had not cut a single canal, whilst our roads were about the worst in Europe. It was not until the

which are most injurious to the interests of the public, and detrimental to the shareholders themselves. Proper means for securing the safety of the passengers have, in too many instances, been neglected, from the crippled resources of the companies, or their, under the circumstances, not unnatural desire to economise. Their servants are, almost as a rule, indifferently paid and overworked; the consequence of which is a want of energy and zeal, and frequently of the physical powers required for the proper performance of their duties. This leads but too often to a serious loss of life and property; and, by entailing on railway companies the payment of large sums as compensation to the injured, or their families, diminishes the already small returns received by the shareholders for the money they have embarked in these undertakings. And, by a strange anomaly, while the profit on the sums actually spent in the construc-year 1760 that Brindley began his first canal for the Duke tion of railways is large, the interest for the money they have cost is inconsiderable. To obviate this inconvenience, the working expenses are reduced to a minimum, but the security of travellers is diminished to an equal extent; and this, by destroying the confidence of the public in the safety of railways, and exciting the fears of the timid, lessens the traffic, and thus augments the evil it is intended to counteract.

The railway system diverted the currents of traffic from old roads, and from a number of towns and villages through which the old coaches travelled. But, if it destroyed employment in some localities, it created it to a much larger extent in others. A parliamentary return shows the number of persons employed by railway companies in various capacities on the 13th of June, 1849. Secretaries or managers, 156; treasurers, 32; engineers, 107; superintendents, 314; store-keepers, 120; accountants or cashiers, 138; inspectors or time-keepers, 490; station-masters, 1,300; draughtsmen, 103; clerks, 4,021; foremen, 709; engine-drivers, 1,839; assistant drivers or firemen, 1,871; guards or breaksmen, 1,631; artificers, 10,809; switchmen, 1,540; gate-keepers, 1,361; policemen or watchmen, 1,508; porters or messengers, 8,238; plate-layers, 5,508; labourers, 14,029; miscellaneous employment, 141-total, 55,968. At the same date there were 103,816 persons employed on railways under construction. The advance which Great Britain has made in practical science and the mechanical arts within a single century | must strike the mind with astonishment in view of the foregoing record of mechanical achievements. The contrast between the past and the present is well put by Mr. Smiles.

"Our first lessons," he says, "in mechanical and civil engineering were principally obtained from Dutchmen, who supplied us with our first windmills, watermills, and pumping engines. Holland even sent us the necessary labourers to execute our first great works of drainage. The great level of the fens was drained by Vermuyden; and another Dutchman, Freestone, was employed to reclaim the marsh near Wells, in Norfolk. Canary Island, near the mouth of the Thames, was embanked by Joas Croppenburgh and his company of Dutch workmen. When a new haven was required at Yarmouth, Joas Johnson, the Dutch engineer, was employed to plan and construct the

of Bridgewater. After the lapse of a century we find the state of things had become entirely reversed. Instead of borrowing engineers from abroad, we now send them to all parts of the world. British-built steamships ply on every sea; we export machinery to all quarters, and supply Holland itself with pumping engines. During that period our engineers have completed a magnificent system of canals, turnpike roads, bridges, and railways, by which the internal communications of the country have been completely opened up. They have built lighthouses around our coasts, by which ships freighted with the produce of all lands, when nearing our shores in the dark, are safely lighted along to their destined havens; they have hewn out and built docks and harbours for the accommodation of a gigantic commerce, whilst their inventive genius has rendered fire and water the most untiring workers in all branches of industry, and the most effective agents in locomotion by land and sea. Nearly all this has been accomplished during the last century, much of it within the life of the present generation."

England has utilised to the utmost extent her water power in perfecting the system of inland navigation. The canals used for the transport of goods and produce in England alone are estimated at 2,200 miles; while the navigable rivers exceed 1,800 miles, making together more than 4,000 miles of inland navigation. One immense advantage of this kind of navigation is its regularity, its being independent of wind and tide, and its being worked by a power that can be always controlled and regulated according to circumstances. Fortunately for the development of our external communication and our commerce with foreign countries, as well as our coasting trade, the power of steam was applied to navigation just at the time when it was required; and by this power we are enabled to extend the same regularity to our maritime commerce, and to secure to a large extent the same independence of wind and tide, and to be able not only to cross the channels between different parts of the United Kingdom, but to traverse the broad Atlantic with nearly the same punctuality that attends our internal communications. Steam power has been made as tractable and subservient in the hands of science as horse power, or as human labour. The first steamboat that was worked for hire in this kingdom was the Comet, a small vessel with an engine of three horse

power. Two years later the Elizabeth, of eight horse power, and the Clyde, of fourteen horse power, were placed upon the river Clyde. Thus Scotland has had the honour of leading the way in this great line of improvement. In 1820 there were but three steam-vessels built and registered in England, four in Scotland, and one in Ireland. In 1826 there were fifty in England, and twenty-two in Scotland, with 9,000 tons burden. The building of steamers proceeded regularly, with an increasing amount of tonnage, till the number rose in 1849 to 1,296 steam-vessels, the aggregate burden of which was 177,310 tons. They were distributed as follows:-In the ports of England, 865 vessels, 103,154 tons; Scotland, 166 vessels, 29,206 tons; Ireland, 111 vessels, 26,369 tons; the Channel Islands, 7 vessels, 955 tons; the colonies, 147 vessels, 17,626 tons.

East Indies.

A committee of the House of Commons was appointed in June, 1837, to inquire into the best means of establishing communication by steam with India by way of the Red Sea. It appeared in the course of that inquiry that the directors of the East India Company had sent orders to the governor general of India, to dispatch a steamship at stated periods from Bombay to Suez. In order still further to expedite the transmission of mails between England and India, a dromedary post was established between Bagdad and Damascus, and thence to Beyrout on the coast of the Mediterranean, to which port was extended the voyage of the steam-vessel that before stopped at Alexandria. In 1836 the governor of Bombay stated in a dispatch to the directors that the three last mails had brought dispatches respectively in 58, 45, and 64 days, stating that this "early intelligence" had given an energetic impulse to the mercantile interest, and had produced unbounded satisfaction, because, in addition to its commercial advantages, it had deprived the painful feeling of separation from home and country of half its bitterness. The dispatch concluded with an earnest prayer for the much desired boon of frequent and regular communication with Europe, by the employment of a sufficient number of steam-vessels for that purpose. During the year 1837, accordingly, arrangements were made for the establishment of a regular monthly steam communication between this country and India by way of the Red Sea upon the follow

The social advantages of steam navigation can scarcely be exaggerated. Its effect on commerce is not more wonderful than upon society in promoting public health, and enlarging the sphere of enjoyment for the masses of the community. The English people, formerly so fond of home, so tied to the localities in which they lived, have been excited by the facility, and economy, and ease, and pleasure of steam navigation to move about from place to place, thus improving their knowledge and augmenting their happiness to a degree that if predicted half a century ago would have appeared an idle dream. The river Thames alone, covered with tiny steamers shooting along like swallows on the surface of the water, would have been a pic-ing basis :-" The government undertakes the transture beyond the conception of a poet's fancy. The number of passengers conveyed between London and Gravesend by steam packets in 1835 was ascertained, by the collector of the pier dues at the latter town, to have been 670,452. It was stated in evidence before a committee of the house of commons in 1836, that 1,057,000 persons passed Blackwall in steam-vessels every year. It might have been thought that this newly-excited propensity to locomotion upon water would have diminished the demand for land conveyances and for horses; but the reverse has been the fact, as appears from the continually increasing number of licences for stage-coaches issued from the Stamp Office, and the enormous number of omnibuses plying in the metropolis and in the large provincial towns, especially in connection with railways, and this without displacing the hackney carriages or cabs, which have been multiplying likewise. It might be supposed that the opening of a railway in the same direction as a line of steam navigation, or vice versa, would seriously diminish the traffic one way or the other. On the contrary, it but increases it. For example, the number of passengers conveyed by the Hull and Selby steam-packets during the twelve months that preceded the opening of the Leeds and Selby railway was 33,882, whereas in the year which followed the opening, the number conveyed by the steamers increased to upwards of 62,000, or nearly doubled. Not only is steam communication kept up between all the principal ports of the United Kingdom, but it is also regularly maintained with all the neighbouring ports on the Continent, with those of France, Holland, Belgium, and other countries. Steam communication was established with the United States of America, with our West Indian Colonies, and with the

mission of the monthly mails between Great Britain and Alexandria at the sole charge of the public; and the East India Company undertakes the transmission of these mails between Alexandria and Bombay, upon condition that onehalf of the expense incurred in the purchase and navigation of steam-vessels, and of any other expense incurred in the service, is defrayed by the government, which is to receive the whole money connected with postage of letters between London and Bombay." This arrangement was carried out, and a further economy of time was obtained by the overland route to Marseilles, instead of transmitting the mails by steam-packets from Falmouth through the Straits of Gibraltar. In this way the journey was shortened to the extent of more than 1,000 miles, the direct distance by Marseilles and Malta being 5,238 miles, and by way of Falmouth, 6,310 miles. This system of conveyance was maintained till 1841, when the government entered into a contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, which undertook to employ powerful steam-vessels for the carrying of letters and passengers between England and Egypt, and between Suez, Ceylon, Madras, and Calcutta, towards the expenses of which the East India Company undertook to contribute £20,000 per annum for five years. After some time there was a further extension of the plan, by which the government engaged to contribute £50,000 per annum towards the expense of the line of steam-packets between Bombay and Suez, £115,000 per annum for the service between Calcutta and Suez, and £45,000 for the service between Ceylon and Hong Kong, making a total of £210,000 per annum, of which one-third was to be repaid by the East India Company. By these arrangements we obtained a regular and safe steam communication twice a month to

India, and once a month to China, at a cost which, though large in amount, cannot be considered extravagant when we consider the magnitude of the advantages secured by it, both political and mercantile, not only to our Oriental empire, but to the United Kingdom. We may judge of the extent of the intercourse thus carried on by the fact that in 1836 we received from Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and Ceylon about 180,000 letters, and that we sent to those places in the same year nearly 112,000 letters. There has been a steady increase ever since in both letters and newspapers. In 1843 we sent out 370,000 letters, and 429,000 newspapers. In 1845 we sent 448,335 letters, and 686,561 newspapers. The number of both letters and newspapers, inwards and outwards, in 1815, was 1,795,028.

Our coasting trade carried on by means of steamers has undergone an astounding development during the twenty years now under review. In 1820 we had but nine steamers engaged in it, with a tonnage of 500. The next year we had 188 steamers, and thenceforth they went on doubling for several years. In 1830 the number of vessels was nearly 7,000, with a tonnage of more than a million; in 1840 it was upwards of 15,000, with a tonnage of nearly three millions; and in 1849 it was 18,343, with a tonnage of upwards of four millions and a quarter. This account does not include vessels arriving and departing in ballast or with passengers only, which are not required to enter the Custom House. Steam-vessels were not employed in this kingdom for conveying goods coastwise before 1820, nor in foreign trade, except for the conveyance of passengers, earlier than 1822. In the foreign trade the number of steamers increased gradually from that year till they reached the number of 4,000, with an aggregate tonnage of 800,000.

jolts, round bogs and over rocks, for a distance of twentyfour miles. Having reached the Menai Strait, the passengers had again to take an open ferry-boat before they could gain the mainland. The tide ran with great rapidity through the Strait, and when the wind blew strong, the boat was liable to be driven far up or down the Channel, and was sometimes swamped altogether. The perils of the Welsh roads had next to be encountered; through North Wales they were rough, narrow, steep, and unprotected, mostly unfenced, and in winter almost impassable. The whole traffic on the road between Shrewsbury and Bangor was conveyed by a small cart, which passed between the two places once a week in summer. As an illustration of the state of the roads in South Wales, which were quite as bad as those in the north, we may state that, in 1803, when the late lord Sudeley took home his bride from the neighbourhood of Welshpool to his residence, only thirteen miles distant, the carriage in which the newly-married pair rode stuck in a quagmire, and the occupants having extricated themselves from their perilous situation, performed the rest of their journey on foot."* Early in the century remedies for this state of things were slowly applied; packet stations were established, with proper landing-places, at Holyhead and Howth, under the direction of Mr. Rennie. Mr. Telford's services were called into requisition for the purpose of constructing roads, all efforts of the postmaster-general, by prosecutions and otherwise, having failed to compel the local authorities to keep the roads in a passable state. Stage-coaches had been frequently overturned and broken down, and the Irish mail-coach took forty-one hours to go from London to Holyhead, the Irish mail arriving in Dublin on the third day. At length, owing to the exertions of Sir Henry Parnell, one of the Irish members, a board of parliamentary commissioners was appointed, of which he was chairman, and the new Shrewsbury and Holyhead road was constructed, the works extending over a period of about fifteen years. These works were conducted by Mr. Telford, who pursued the same system that he had adopted in the formation of the Carlisle and Glasgow road as regards metalling, crossdraining, and fence-walling; for the latter purpose using schist or slate-rubble work instead of sandstone. The new road passing along the slopes of rocky precipices and across inlets of the sea, it became necessary to build many bridges, to form many embankments, and cut away long stretches of rock, in order to secure an easy and commodious route. The select committee of the House of Commons, in 1819, expressed the strongest approbation of the manner in which this road was constructed, stating that the professional

Among the improvements of the age, none were more important than the works constructed for the purpose of facilitating communication between England and Ireland. We have seen, in our account of the visit of George IV. to Dublin, how difficult, how tedious, uncertain, and perilous was that communication, even so late as 1821; though the people of that time no doubt congratulated themselves that their facilities for travelling were so much greater than those of their ancestors. There certainly had been much gained in point of economy. In Roberts's "Social History of the Southern Counties," there is an account of a journey to Dublin performed in June, 1787, in a coach and four, accompanied by a post-chaise and pair and five outriders. The party reached Holyhead from London in four days, at a cost of £75 11s. 3d. The ferry at Bangor cost £1 10s.; the expenses of the yacht hired to carry the party across the Channel, £28 7s. 9d.; the duty on the coach, £7 13s. 4d.; boats on shore, £1 1s. Total, £114 3s. 4d.execution of the works upon it surpassed anything of These expenses were much greater than the figures indicate, the kind in these countries. "The science which has been owing to the much higher value of money in those times. displayed in giving the general line of the road a proper In order to avoid tossing perhaps for several days in the inclination through a country whose whole surface consists Irish Channel, parties proceeded to Holyhead, whence the of a succession of rocks, bogs, ravines, rivers, and precipices, passage by sea was considerably shorter. When the tra- reflects the greatest credit upon the engineer who planned veller from Dublin arrived at Holyhead, he was landed them; but perhaps a still greater degree of professional upon the bare, bleak rocks, without any shelter or protec-skill has been shown in the construction, or rather the tion, or conveniences of any kind. "From Holyhead building of the road itself. The great attention which across the island of Anglesea there was no road, but only

a miserable track, circuitous and craggy, full of terrible

* Smiles's "Lives of the Engineers," vol. I, p. 434.