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

CHAP, xxxn.] RESULT OF THE SATURNALIA. 403
fore, work upon shareholders' gratitude for " favours to come ;
and their testimonial accordingly ended with resolutions and
speeches. Mr. Stephenson never asked for nor expected a testi-
monial. He had done the work of his life, and had retired from
the field of railway enterprise, reposing upon his own sturdy
independence.
Mr. Stephenson was afterwards somewhat indignant to find
that, notwithstanding the " great obligations " which the chairman
of the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Company had informed
the proprietors they were under to their engineer for the
labour and energy which he had devoted in their service, so
much to their pecuniary advantage, the only issue of their fine
resolutions and speeches was an allotment made to him of some
thirty of the shares issued under the powers of the act which he
had been mainly instrumental in obtaining. The Chairman
himself, it afterwards appeared, had at the same time appropri-
— "
ated not fewer than 10,894 of the same shares, the premiums
on which were then worth, in the market, about 145,000Z. The
manner in which the gratitude of the Company and their Chairman
was thus expressed to their engineer, was strongly resented
by Mr. Stephenson at the time, and a coolness took place between
him and Mr. Hudson which was never wholly removed,
though they afterwards shook hands, and Mr. Stephenson
declared that all was forgotten.
Mr. Hudson's brief reign was now drawing rapidly to a close.
The saturnalia of 1845 was followed by a sudden reaction.
Shares went down faster than they had gone up ;
the holders of
them hastened to sell, in order to avoid payment of the calls ;
and the fortunes of many were utterly wrecked. Then came
sudden repentance, and professed return to virtue. The betting
man, who, temporarily abandoning the turf for the share-market,
had played his heaviest stakes and lost,— ^the merchant who had
left his business, aiid the doctor who had neglected his patients,
to gamble in railway stock, and been ruined,—the penniless
knaves and. schemers, who had speculated so recklessly, and
gained so little,—the titled and fashionable people, who had
bowed themselves so low before the idol of the day, and found
themselves so deceived and " done,"—the credulous small capi-