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

CHAP. VI.] MEDITATES EMIGRATING TO AMERICA. 49
Manchester, Newcastle, and elsewhere, through scarcity of work
and lowness of wages. Every seventh person in England was
a pauper, maintained out of the poor-rates,—there being, in
1807, 1,234,000 paupers to 7,636,000 persons who were not
paupers. Those labourers who succeeded in finding employment
were regularly mulcted of a large portion of their earnings to
maintain the unemployed, and at the same time to carry on the
terrible war in which Britain contended single-handed against
Napoleon, then everywhere victorious. The working people
were also liable to be pressed for the navy, or drawn for the
militia ; and though men could not fail to be discontented under
such circumstances, they scarcely dared, in those perilous times,
even to mutter their discontent to their neighbours.
George Stephenson was one of those drawn at that time for
the militia. He must therefore either quit his work and go a-
soldiering, or find a substitute. He adopted the latter course,
and paid a considerable sum of money to a militia-man to serve
in his stead. Thus nearly the whole of his hard-won earnings
were swept away at a stroke* He was almost in despair, and
contemplated the idea of leaving the country, and emigrating to
the United States. A voyage thither was then a more formidable
thing for a working man to accomplish than a voyage to Australia
is now. But he seriously entertained the project, and had all
but made up his mind. His sister Ann with her husband emi-
grated about that time, but George could not raise the requisite
money, and they departed without him. After all, it went sore
against his heart to leave his home and his kindred—the scenes
of his youth and the friends of his boyhood ; but he struggled
long with the idea, brooding over it in sorrow. Speaking afterwards
to a friend of his thoughts at the time, he said— " You
know the road from my house at the West Moor to Killingworth.
I remember when I went along that road I wept bitterly, for I
knew not where my lot would be cast." But Providence had
better and greater things in store for George Stephenson than
the lot of a settler in the wilds of America. It was well that
his poverty prevented him from prosecuting further the idea of
emigration, and rooted him to the place where he afterwards
worked out his great career so manfully and victoriously.
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