The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

CHAP. XXVI.] UNFULFILLED PROPHECIES OF EVIL. 31I
strated the practicability and the safety of regular travelling at
thirty and forty miles an hour. The House of Commons pro-
phecy, that " a railway could never enter into successful compe-
tition with a canal, and that, even with the best locomotive
engine, the average rate would be but three miles and a half per
hour," * was now laughed at, because so ludicrously at variance
with every-day facts.
The opening of the great main line of railroad communication
between London, Liverpool, and Manchester, in 1838, shortly
proved the fallaciousness of the rash prophecies promulgated by
the opponents of railways. The proprietors of the canals were
astounded by the fact that, notwithstanding the immense traffic
conveyed by rail, their own traffic and receipts continued to in-
crease; and that, in common with other interests, they fully
shared in the expansion of trade and commerce which had been
so effectually promoted by the extension of the railway system.
The cattle-owners were equally amazed to find the price of
horse-flesh increasing with the extension of railways, and that
the number of coaches running to and from the new railway sta-
tions gave employment to a greater number of horses than under
the old stage-coach system. Those who had prophesied the
decay of the metropolis, and the ruin of the suburban cabbage-
growers, in consequence of the approach of railways to London,t
were also disappointed. For, whilst the new roads let citizens
out of London, they let country people in. Their action, in this
respect, was centripetal as well as centrifugal. Tens of thou-
sands who had never seen the metropolis could now visit it expe-
ditiously and cheaply. And Londoners who had never visited
the country, or but rarely, were enabled, at little cost of time or
* Hansard, 2d series, vol. iv. p. 853.
t " The first practical, effect," said the John Bull, in Sept. 1838, " of these
unnatural forcings of humanity will be, the reduction in value of all property-
near London, and the proportionate increase of value in property more remote.
AH the delicate produce of the garden and the field, which round town is cultivated
with the most assiduous care, and consequently sold at a high and
remunerating price, will be excluded from our markets: fine fruit, fine vegetables,
raised and produced at half, or less than half the cost, will be brought
into competition with those which have hitherto been raised and ripened by a
great expenditure in high wages, and carried to the place of sale by teams of
horses kept at a considerable expense. All this must end."