Chapter 25

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 £.2, 8s.; while a loaded stage-coach would pay only four shillings! On the Bathgate road the same carriage would be charged £.1, 7s. 1d.; while a coach drawn by four horses would pay five shillings. On the Ashburnham and Totness road, steam would pay £.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 £.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 £.30,000. Within the space of fourteen years say, industry had created out of nothing the incredible sum of £.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.

Such as he is, Mr Cobden, it cannot be denied, fills for the present a large space in the public eye; and so he will continue to fill until occult party supports are withdrawn, and, having served the turn, he is left to the natural operation of the principles of gravitation, and to sink to the nothingness from which he has been forced up by the political accidents and agitation of the day. Lamentably astern in economical lore and political knowledge as he is, and as the want of that educational preparation upon which alone the foundation of knowledge and of principles can be raised, has left him, Mr Cobden, it must be conceded, turns the old rags, the cast-off clothes, of other people's crotchets to good account popularly; he succeeds where others fail, not because he is less ignorant but because he is more fearless. But newly come into the world, as it may be said, with little learning from books, with understanding little enlarged by study, and furnished only with those clap-trap generalities, that declamatory trash, which may be gleaned from reading diligently the Radical weekly papers, Mr Cobden boldly takes for granted that all which is new to himself must be unknown to the older world about him. Thus he appropriates, without scruple, because in sheer ignorance, the ideas and discoveries, such as they are and as they seem to him, of others, his more experienced Radical contemporaries. He plunders Daniel Hardcastle, in open day, of his banking and currency dogmas; he fleeces Bowring before his eyes of his one-sided Free Trade and Anti-corn-Law stock in business; nay, he mounts Joseph Hume's well-known stalking-horse against "ships, colonies, and commerce," (colonial,) and forthwith on to the foray. Yet he alone remains unconscious of the spoliations patent to all the world besides--

"Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."

He retails the worn-out conceits of others as new and wondrous discoveries of his own genius and profound meditation; and all with such a simplicity and complacency of self-satisfied conviction, that you never dream or impugning the good faith with which

----"His undoubting mind Believed the magic wonders which he sung."