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

386 LIFE OF GEOEGE STEPHENSON. [chap. xxxi.
much interested in its continuance as were the vulgar herd of
money-grubbers. The railway prospectuses now issued—unlike
the original Liverpool and Manchester, and London and Birmingham
schemes—were headed by peers, baronets, landed pro-
prietors, and strings of M. Ps. Thus, it was found in 1845,
that not fewer than 157 members of Parliament were on the
lists of new companies as subscribers for sums ranging from
291,000^. downwards ! The projectors of new lines even came
to boast of their parliamentary strength, and of the number of
votes which they could command in " the House.'' The influ-
ence which landowners had formerly brought to bear upon Par-
liament in resisting railways when called for by the public
necessities, was now employed to carry, measures of a far differ-
ent kind, originated by cupidity, knavery, and folly. But these
gentlemen had discovered by this time that railways were as a
golden mine to them. They sat at railway boards, sometimes
selling to themselves their own land at their own price, and pay-
ing themselves with the money of the unfortunate shareholders.
Others used the railway mania as a convenient and, to them-
selves, comparatively inexpensive mode of purchasing constituencies.
It was strongly suspected that honourable members
adopted what Yankee legislators call " log-rolling," that is,
" You help me to roll my log, and I help you to roll yours." At
all events, it is matter of fact, that, through parliamentary in-
fluence, many utterly ruinous branches and extensions projected
during the mania, calculated only to benefit the inhabitants of a
few miserable old boroughs accidentally omitted from schedule
A, were authorized in the memorable sessions of 1844 and
1845.
This boundless speculation of course gave abundant employment
to the engineers. They were found ready to attach their
names to the most daring and foolish projects,—railways through
hills, across arms of the sea, over or under great rivers, spanning
valleys at great heights or boring their way under the ground,
across barren moors, along precipices, over bogs, and through
miles of London streets. One line was projected direct from
Leeds to Liverpool, which, if constructed, would involve a tunnel,
or a deep rock, cutting through the hills, twenty miles long. No