Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/18

6 TACIS, FAILUEES, A^'I> ECAUDS.

superiority of railway transit to other means of communication is now so generally conceded, that no surprise can be felt at the further indefinite demand for its extension. The railways already formed constitute, in history, the record of a clearly-defined period of transition—one of those ever-recurring cycles in which long suspense and needless delay in the application and extension of scientific invention, has been followed by the enthusiastic entertainment of new and novel enterprises, terminating in a wild and general mania. What the character of that mania was, most persons are well able to remember; viz., its early and bright phases which promised full reward to all who engaged in it; and its subsequent sombre reaction, accompanied by disclosures which compromised high names, and caused almost universal depression and distress.

Following the date when the superiority of the railway became to be admitted, the period is arrived at which the most vital conditions of success were neglected, and the circumstance of directors, under the bias of temptations which they found irresistible, were witnessed sacrificing to immediate gain the future interests of their companies. By supplying the public with fictitious data, and stimulating further outlays by a disproportionate return on investments, the resources of the old lines were weakened through the endeavour to evade legislative provisions for limiting profits; boards entered on endless schemes