Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/21

 engines would set fire to the houses and manufactories on the line of route; the race of horses would become extinct, and many other direful consequences would ensue, amidst which the absolute ruin of the country would shrink to the insignificance of a detail! The first surveys had to be accomplished, in many cases, by stealth, and were, in some cases, resisted to the extent of the employment of armed force.

After the lapse of sixty years, we can afford to smile at the folly of those who seriously maintained such theories as these; but the opposition to be encountered was no laughing matter, we may be sure, to the earnest pioneers of the new movement who had staked their means and their reputations upon the issue of the undertaking, and devoted themselves heart and soul to the effort to carry it to a successful termination. At length, in March, 1825, the survey, in spite of all difficulties, had been completed, and the Bill was in Committee; but, after a lengthened discussion, extending over thirty-seven days, and chiefly owing to the opposition of the landowners and canal proprietors, it failed, and its enemies were for the time being triumphant. The sequel, however, shows that their exultation was premature and but short-lived.

The simile of Dame Partington striving with her mop to keep back the waves of the Atlantic is one sufficiently trite and well-worn, but it recurs almost irresistibly to the mind in contemplating the futile and hopeless attempt of these enemies of progress to arrest the march of that tremendous social revolution which, within the span of a single generation, was destined to change the whole face of the earth.

Nothing daunted by their first failure, the great