Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

V >> Various >> Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

"It has frequently been urged against these carriages, that wherever they
may be introduced, they must effectually prevent all other travelling on
the road, as no horse will bear the noise and smoke of the engine. The
Committee believe that these statements are unfounded. Whatever noise may
be complained of, arises from the present defective construction of the
machinery, and will be corrected as the makers of such carriages gain
greater experience. Admitting even that the present engines do work with
some degree of noise, the effect on horses has been greatly exaggerated.
All the witnesses accustomed to travel in these carriages, even in the
crowded roads adjacent to the metropolis, have stated, that horses are
very seldom frightened in passing."

But in 1834, the report is still more conclusive on this point. Mr
Macneil, a distinguished civil engineer, gives the following evidence:--

"At the time the Committee sat in 1831, I could speak as to having seen
only one steam-carriage on a turnpike road, and as to the effect on horses
that passed it on the road. From considerable experience since that time,
_I am quite certain, that in a very short period there will be no
complaint of horses being frightened by steam-carriages._ I do not know
that I have seen more than two or three horses in all my experience, that
were at all frightened by any of the carriages. I travelled with, and I
have passed many times through some of the most crowded streets in London
and in Birmingham, in steam-carriages. I have also seen horses out in the
morning, led by grooms, which would in all probability be startled by any
object at all likely to frighten a horse, and they did not take the least
notice of the engine. At another time, several ladies passed on horseback
without the least alarm, and some of them rode close after the carriage,
and alongside of it, as long as they could keep up with it."

This evidence is corroborated by all the other witnesses; and great as the
noise, and fearful as the horrid gasping of the engine may be, we are not
prepared to say that terror may not as naturally be excited in the heart
of the most gallant of Houyeneans by the thunder and glitter of a fast
coach, rushing downhill at the rate of sixteen miles an hour. In fact, the
horse that has ceased--like a young lady after her second season--to be
shy, will care no more for a steam-engine than a tilted waggon. And it is
decidedly our private and confidential opinion, from a long experience of
vivacious roadsters, that a quadruped which maintains its equanimity on
encountering a baker's cart with an awning, will face the noisiest and
most vociferous of boilers. But granting that the committee is right in
coming to this conclusion as far as regards the danger arising to horses,
the other objection we alluded to was a poser, from which we shall be glad
to see how they extricate themselves--we mean the injury done to the
turnpike road. Why, it turns out that a steam-coach does no injury at all;
but, from the necessity it is under to sport the widest and strongest of
wheels, it acts as a sort of roller, and might pass for a deputy Macadam.
Mr Macneil, who has had great experience in road surveying, says that,
even in 1831, he had stated that, from the examination he had made as to
the wear of iron in the shoes of horses, compared with the wear on the
tire of the wheels of carriages, the injury done to the turnpike roads
would be much less by steam-carriages than that done by mail and stage
coaches drawn by horses. Since then, "I have had practical experience on
this point, and have carefully examined the roads in different parts of
the country where steam-carriages have been running, and I have every
reason to believe the opinion I then gave was correct; indeed, I have not
the least doubt in my mind, that if steam-carriages ran generally on the
turnpike roads of the kingdom, _one-half of the annual expense of the
repairs of these roads would be saved_."

It is supposed that the tolls throughout England are let for more than a
million and a half a-year! A saving of one half in this enormous amount
would fructify in the pockets (now remarkably in need of some process of
the kind) of the public, to the entire satisfaction of Rebecca and all her
daughters. And yet with this evidence, of perhaps the best practical
authority on the subject, before their eyes, let us see what the wiseacres
of certain rural districts did to encourage economy and inland transit. By
means of a tremendous instrument of tyranny called a local act, (for which
the Grand Sultan would be very glad to exchange his firman,) the road
trustees of various neighbourhoods have laid an embargo on all steam
carriages, by enacting _intolerable_ payments. Thus on the Liverpool and
Prescot road, a steam-carriage would be charged L.2, 8s.; while a loaded
stage-coach would pay only four shillings! On the Bathgate road the same
carriage would be charged L.1, 7s. 1d.; while a coach drawn by four horses
would pay five shillings. On the Ashburnham and Totness road, steam would
pay L.2; and a four-horse coach three shillings. And how did these sages
settle the rates of payment? The reader would never guess, so we will tell
him at once-they charged for each horse power as if the boiler contained a
whole stud, all trampling the road to atoms with iron shoes; whereas they
ought have let the broad-wheeled carriage go free, if, indeed, they were
not called on to pay it a certain sum each journey for the benefit it did
the highway.

Such was the evidence that led the committee to decide, in 1834, on the
practicability, the safety, and economy of running steam-carriages on
common roads. It will be sufficient to give a list of the witnesses
examined, to show that the highest authorities were consulted before the
report was framed. They were--

Mr Goldsworthy Gurney.
Walter Hancock.
John Farey, civil engineer.
Richard Trevethick.
Davies Gilbert, M.P., president of the Royal Society.
Nathanael Ogle.
Alexander Gordon, civil engineer.
Joseph Gibbs.
Thomas Telford, president of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
William A. Summers.
James Stone.
James Macadam, road surveyor.
John Macneil, civil engineer, and
Colonel Torrens, M.P.

Since the date of the last Report railways have run their titanic course;
and whether from the opposition of wise road trustees, or a want of
enterprise in steam-carriage proprietors, or from some other cause, steam
locomotion on common roads has not made any progress. But, in spite of the
powerful evidence we have quoted, we cannot conceal from ourselves that
there was always an _if_ or a _but_ attached to the complete triumph of
the new system. The _if_ and the _but_, it will be seen, had reference to
the nature of the road. Mr Macneil and the other able and scientific
gentlemen examined, all concurred in calling for a vast improvement on the
highways to be travelled on--"a smooth and well-dressed pavement"--"a hard
pavement"--"a smooth pavement on a solid foundation"--they all agree in
thinking indispensable to the complete triumph of steam. "If on the road,"
says Mr Macneil, "from London to Birmingham, there were a portion laid off
on the side of the road for steam carriages, and if it be made in a solid
manner, with pitching and well-broken granite, it would fall very little
short of a railroad. It would be easy to fence it off from fifteen to
twenty feet without injury to property." And a statement to the same
effect was made in November 1833, to which the following names are
appended:--

Thomas Telford, P.I.C.E.
John Rickman, commissioner for Highland roads and bridges.
C.W. Pasley, colonel royal engineers.
Bryan Donkin, manufacturing engineer.
T. Bramah, civil engineer.
James Simpson, manufacturing engineer.
John Thomas, civil engineer.
Joshua Field, manufacturing engineer.
John Macneil, civil engineer.
Alexander Gordon, civil engineer.
William Carpmael, civil engineer.

"There can be no doubt," say they, "that a well-constructed engine, a
steam-carriage conveyance between London and Birmingham, at a velocity
unattainable by horses, and limited only by safety, may be maintained; and
it is our conviction that such a project might be undertaken with great
advantage to the public, more particularly if, as might obviously be the
case, without interfering with the general use of the road, a portion of
it were to be prepared and kept in a state most suitable for travelling in
locomotive steam-carriages."

But in this is the whole difficulty as far as regards the best granite
road; for, supposing for a moment that all the other conditions were
fulfilled--that it was hard and smooth--one great element is to be taken
into consideration, from which no skill and science can exempt the best
and firmest Macadam; and that is the effect of atmospheric changes on the
surface of the road. The difference of tractive power in summer and winter
must be immense, and the great disadvantage of mechanical, as compared
with animal draught, is its want of adaptability to the exigencies of an
ordinary road. A steam-carriage of ten horse power cannot under any
circumstances, when it encounters a newly mended part of the road, or a
softer soil, put forth an additional power for a minute or two, as a team
of horses can do; so that equality of exertion is nearly indispensable for
the full advantage of an engine. We accordingly find that the opponents of
steam-travelling on common roads, gained their object by covering the
highway with a coating of broken stones fourteen inches deep. Through this
it was impossible to force the coach without such a strain as to displace
or otherwise injure the machinery. But when a system of locomotion,
containing so many advantages, has so nearly been brought to perfection,
in spite of the many difficulties presented by the common modes of making
a road, it would be inconceivable blindness in the parties interested in
the subject to overlook the certain mode of success offered to them, by
merely laying down a portion of the road in wood. Who those parties are we
have already pointed out. They are the inhabitants and owners of property
in towns and neighbourhoods at some distance from railway traffic; and if
the proprietors of great lines of railway saw their own interest, they
would be foremost in adopting the new method as an auxiliary, and not view
it as a rival or an enemy. For it is very evident that nothing can be so
beneficial to a railway already in operation as a branch line, by which a
hitherto unopened district can be united to their stations. And the
difference of expense between the two systems--namely, between an iron
railway and a wooden pavement--is so great, that the latter is scarcely
beyond the power of the poorest neighbourhood. An iron branch was at one
time proposed between Steventon and Oxford. The same sum which would have
been required for this purpose, according to the estimates, would have
laid down an excellent road in wood from Steventon through Oxford to
Rugby; thus connecting the three great arteries of the country--the Great
Western, the Birmingham, and the Midland Counties Railways. It will be
found that the great lines of railway have been forced, at an unavoidable
and foreseen loss, to spread out minor or tributary lines, which, if the
system of wood-paving had been in existence, might have been laid down at
less than a third of the expense, and producing a proportionate profit.
This view of the case has not been altogether neglected, for it has been
dwelt on at some length in an able pamphlet on "the Use of Mechanical
Power in Draught on Turnpike Roads, with reference to the new system of
Wood Paving." It is evidently the work of a practical man, who has deeply
studied the subject. "No part of the community," he says, "are likely to
benefit so largely by the introduction of the new system as the holders of
railway shares. For though, in all probability, the railroads would not
have been constructed to their present extent had the virtues of wood
paving been earlier known, yet it would be absurd to contend that the
wooden road will ever be able to compete with the existing iron lines. The
new principle, however, may be most usefully adopted by the railway
companies themselves, in the formation of branches or tributary roads, the
completion of which has hitherto entailed on them enormous expense
unattended by corresponding benefits. The proposed system, at all events,
is worth a trial by many other towns besides the one chosen for
illustration by the author of the pamphlet. He fixes on Shrewsbury, a
place already on the decline, and not likely to recover its former
prosperity, unless it can establish steam communication with the great
lines of railway at Wolverhampton. "But capitalists," he adds, "who see
the small amount of dividend paid to their shareholders by the minor
railways, can no longer be induced to embark their money in similar
undertakings. Let a portion, however, of the noble, but now
half-deserted, Holyhead road be paved with wood, and for a comparatively
trifling cost of less than L.50,000, in six months from the present time
steamers could be enabled to run along the entire line with safety,
infinitely greater than, and speed almost equal to, that on the
Birmingham Railway."

We feel sure that these considerations need only to be stated to have
their due weight, and we shall be greatly surprised if an effort is not
soon made to avoid the ruin impending over so many towns. Among others,
the beautiful town of Salisbury should take an interest in this matter;
for what can be more evident that she will fall rapidly to decay, if she
cannot establish a steam communication with Southampton on one side, and
Bath and Bristol on the other. Salisbury, above all other places, ought to
know the value of a good road; for she has the fate of her elder sister
Sarum before her eyes. Decay--disfranchisement--contempt will assuredly be
her lot, if she allows herself to be treated in the same way as the
venerable Sarum was in the days of her youth--for do not the antiquaries
tell us what was the cause of Sarum's fall? It has, in fact, become so
notorious, that it has even got into Topographical Dictionaries. "About
this time," the reign of Edward the First, "Bishop Bridport built a bridge
at Harnham, and thus changing the direction of the Great Western Road,
which formerly passed through Old Sarum, that place was completely
deserted, and Salisbury became one of the most flourishing cities of the
kingdom."

The same will be recorded of her by future chroniclers, if she do not
seize this opportunity of retrieving her possession of "the Great Western
Road." "In the reign of Queen Victoria, a railroad being established at
some distance from Salisbury, and the traffic being thus diverted from it,
which once formed the great source of its prosperity, it became completely
deserted; Shaftesbury, Sturminster, and Sherborne, shared in her ruin; and
Swindon became one of the most flourishing places in the kingdom." We
cannot think so meanly of our countrymen, as to suppose that they will
yield like white-livered cravens, and die without a struggle; and in thus
raising the voice of Maga to warn them of their danger, and instruct them
how to avoid it, we consider that we are doing the state some service, and
pointing out new means profitable employment for the capital of the rich,
and the labour of the poor.

* * * * *

COMMERCIAL POLICY--SHIPS, COLONIES, AND COMMERCE.

Who, standing on the shore, has not seen, as the gale freshened into storm
and swelled into the hurricane, the waves of the clear green sea gradually
lose their brightness, until raking up from the lowest depths, convulsed
with the mighty strife of the elements, the very obscene dregs and refuse
of all matter terreous, or instinct of life, the mounting billows become
one thick and unsightly mass of turbid waters, chafing with all the foam
and froth of the unclean scourings of the deep, rioting in the ascendant?
As in the world physical, so is it with the order of nature in the world
moral and political. As the social horizon becomes troubled, as reform
careers on to revolution, the empire of mind is overwhelmed--the brute
matter and fiercer spirits of the masses ascend, and ride the tempest
political more triumphantly as incipient confusion thickens into confirmed
chaos.

The bad eminence popularly of men so devoid of all principle and
integrity, so strangely uncouth and assorted, as the Daniel O'Connells,
the John M'Hales, and the Feargus O'Connors; of men so unlearned in all
principle, political and economical--so wanting, moreover, in the presence
of the higher order of moral sentiments, as the Cobdens, the Brights, the
Rory O'Mores, the Aucklands, and Sydney (he of the League) Smiths, is
among the worst symptoms of the diseased times upon which the country has
fallen. It recalls forcibly to mind, it reproduces the opening scenes and
the progress, the men and the machinery, of the first French Revolution,
the precursor of so many more, upon the last act of the last fashioned
melodrama of which the curtain has not yet probably descended. How then
the meaner spirits succeeded in the whirlwind of change, to the mightier
minds which first conjured and hoped to control it; how the Mirabeaux, the
Lally Tollendals, the Mouniers of the Assembly, were replaced and
popularly displaced by the sophists and intriguers of the Gironde and the
Constituent; how, in the Convention and the hall of the Jacobins, the
coarser men of the whole movement--the Dantons, the Robespierres, the
Marats, the facetious as ferocious Bareres, the stupid Anacharsis
Clootzes--trampled under foot, or finished with the guillotine, the
_phraseurs_ and _meneurs_ of the Gironde, your orators of set speech,
glittering abstractions, and hair-splitting definitions; the Brissots,
Vergniauds, Condorcets, and Rolands, who could degrade, dethrone, and
condemn a king to perpetual imprisonment, but were just too dainty of
conscience to go the whole hog of murder. As history, like an old
almanack, does but repeat itself within a given cycle of years, so the
same round, cast, and change of characters and characteristics, with all
the other paraphernalia of the great drama, Reform and Revolution, as
performed in France, have been, and are in due order enacting and
exhibiting in this country. We have already seen, however, the Greys,
Hollands, and Broughams, the fathers and most eloquent apostles of Reform,
dethroned by a clique of large talkers about great principles, with a
comparatively small stock of ideas to do business on, such as Mr
appropriation Ward, the Tom Duncombes, Villierses, &c., men vastly
inferior in talents and attainments, after all, to the Gironde, of whom
they are the _imitatores servum pecus_; whilst these again "give place" on
the pressure from without of the one-idea endowed tribe of Repealers of
Unions and Corn-Laws--the practical men of the Mountain genus--the
O'Connells, Cobdens, and Brights, who, not yet so fierce as their
predecessors of the Robespierre and Clootz dynasty, are so far content
with patronising the "strap and billy roller" in factories, instead of
carting aristocrats to the guillotine, which may come hereafter, if, as
they say, appetites grow with what they feed on. For it is a fact recorded
in history, that Robespierre himself was naturally a man of mild
temperament and humane disposition, converted into a sanguinary monster,
as some wild beasts are, with the first taste of human blood. Anacharsis
Clootz, his coadjutor, the celebrated "orator of the human race," in his
day, was at least a free trader as thorough-going, as eminently eloquent
and popular a leader, as Mr Cobden himself.

On the present occasion, our business chiefly lies with the gentleman
known as Mr Alderman Richard Cobden, M.P. for the borough of Stockport,
one of the first samples sent up of municipal and representative reform
achievement. Mr Cobden is an example of successful industry when
translated to a proper sphere of action. Fortunate in the maternal
relationship of a Manchester warehouseman, domiciliated in the classic
regions of cotton and Cheapside, he was taken as an "odd lad" into the
establishment. In process of time he was advanced to the more honourable
grade of traveller, in days of yore styled "bagman," to the concern.
Somewhere about 1825 or 1826, we find him transplanted to Manchester, in
partnership with two other persons of the same craft and trading position,
where they enjoyed the patronage of the late Mr Richard Fort, an extensive
calico-printer, at, and in his latter years member for, the borough of
Clitheroe in the north of Lancashire. He leased to them one of his
print-works near Chorley, and such, it is understood, was the success of
the trio, that when, after a partnership of some thirteen or fourteen
years, they separated, the division of fairly won spoil accruing to each
was not less than L.30,000. Within the space of fourteen years say,
industry had created out of nothing the incredible sum of L.90,000.
During his travels, like Jemmy the sandman, for orders, Mr Cobden became
initiated into the science of "spouting;" he became the oracle and orator
of bars and travellers' rooms; the observed of all observers, from the
gentlemen of the road down to waiters, barmaids, and boots. The roadsters
of his, as of these days, were no longer, however, of the same high-toned
class as that of the "bagmen" in times gone by. Tradition tells now only
of the splendid turns-out, the dinner-table luxury, the educated
commercial polish, the "feast of reason and the flow of soul" enjoyment,
of a race defunct; the degenerate crew of Cobden's association, with
wages cut down to short common commissions, dined not at home; tea and
turn-in, with a sleeping draught of whisky toddy, were the staples of
mine host's bill. Such is briefly the report of the rise and progress of
Mr Cobden in the world, as we have it from quarters entitled to regard;
various exaggerated statements about his hundreds of thousands acquired,
are afloat as usual in cases where men spring from nothing; his trading
career has been sufficiently prosperous and extraordinary, not to be
rendered incredible by ridiculous inventions of friends or foes. About
the locale of his birth and residence, of his origin and antecedents, Mr
Cobden himself ever maintains a guarded silence, as if, with
aristocratical airs growing with his fortunes, he were ashamed, and would
cast the slough of family poverty and plebeianship; or perhaps he
calculates on leaving the world, Sussex at least, hereafter to dispute
the honours of his paternity like another Homer.

Mr Cobden is but a type, not of the highest cast either, of the
manufacturing operatives of Lancashire. You will find his equal in one at
least out of every ten of the adult factory workmen of Lancashire, whose
wits are sharpened by everyday conflict and debate in clubs and publics;
you will often meet his superior in those self-educated classes. We have
not unfrequently read speeches at public meetings by intelligent
operatives in Lancashire, which showed a more profound acquaintance with,
and greater powers of development of the _rationale_ of political and
economical philosophy, in single instances, than can be discovered in the
mass of harangues poured forth by Mr Cobden, were the flowers ever so
carefully culled and separated from the loads of trashy weed. His forte
consists in a coarse but dauntless intrepidity, with which respectability
and intellect shrink from encounter. The country squire, educated and
intelligent, but retiring and truth-loving, retreats naturally from
contest with a bold, abusive, and unscrupulous demagogue; even the party
he serves, holds off from contact and communion with him. He never quails,
therefore, because never matched, unless before Mr Ferrand, the fearless
member for Knaresborough--a man most ill-used, even abandoned by the very
party he so signally serves; yet who is never slow, as occasion offers, to
chastise the cur which snarls whilst it crouches before him. The eloquence
of Mr Cobden is of that vulgarly-exciting sort, well adapted to the level
of the audiences, the scum of town populations, to which it is habitually
addressed. Without the education of the late Henry Hunt, he has quite as
much capacity and more tact, with the single exception, that when
attempting to soar to the metaphorical he is apt to enact the ludicrous
blunders of Astley's clown aping the affected pomposity of the master; as
_v.g._ in the "demon rising from the Thames with an Act of Parliament in
his hands." Mr Alderman Cobden is, withal, a very ostentatious declaimer
about "great first principles;" but into the nature and the definition of
those principles he is the most abstemious of all men from entering. The
subtlety of a principle escapes the grasp of his intellect; he can deal
with it only as a material substance clear to sight and to touch, like a
common calico. Hence he talks about principles and cotton prints as if
they were convertible terms.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24