The Express.
London, England, 1851-09-18 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 19.

We have purposely delayed expressing the opinions
suggested by the late railway accidents, aware how
fear and anger predominate in the first moments
that elapse after aoirh catastrophes. We have fully
participated in such sentiments; but they are bad
councillors, and arc very apt to end in idle declama-
tion, or in advice very to the purpose. Nor
are fear and anger the sole motives, there being
parties who have strong interests and opinions, for
leaving railways to the management of proprietors,
or fur depriving proprietors of all control and ma-
nagement, in order to vest them in the hnnds
of government. The letter scheme might remedy
the evils which arise from the anxiety of proprietors
to extract front railways a fair and profitable dirt-
dend. Hut without this anxiety and care we may
consider hundreds of millions of capital to be last
and sunk to the great detriment of the pablie
wealth ; whilst that tenderness for the public con-
venience or censure, which railroad proprietors may
be made to feel, would he utterly load upon a govern-
ment administration. We have but to contemplate

how our Custom-house authorities treat our -mer-
chants, or how our EsLiSe authorities treat the
manufacturers subjected to them, to learn how a go-
verronsiit railway heard would treat the public,
were locomotion made an apansge of government, and
entrusted to a central management in Somerset-
house.
At the same time circumstances have driven rail.

way directions into experiments and cosines far be- I
pod what their expoienee, their materiel, the first
oust ractionof the line, or the formation of trustworthy
servants warranted. Competition, which in most
cues was entered into more to avoid ruin than to
snatch at extraordinary gains, necessitated divers
things. In the first place it impelled English rail-
ways to make use of a degree of speed nut compati-
ble with general safety, and not suitable to the
materiel hitherto employed. And that degree of
;speed contributes to danger not m-rely in their
terms trains, where it is produced to a sitcri-
vision. but even in all trains, where the habit,' of high
speed necessarily creates a recklessness, perilous to
the lives entrusted to it. Yet none have called for
speed more imperatively than the public, that has
been j lard by it.
In ae:rdon to the needless rinks, generated from
the necessity and the habit of speed, have come this
year the neecavity of transporting greater numbers than
were ever contemplated. To these, we need not say,
railways are indebted to the Great Exhibition, and to
the attraction which it has bestowed upon the metro-
polis. It is not merely railway directors. but all men
of local eminence and authority, who have devised
and put in practice means for bringing up to and
bringing back from London, once in the season, we
•niglit say, the whole population of England. To
'ids is to be added the influx front the Con-
tinent. For tho number of travellers thus arti-
ft ially created, and yet for the creation of
v hich surely praise is to be Emmons', not
:dame, it was unavoidable, that the number of trains
should be augmented, and that certain hairs should
Le eh( apened, and regulated as excursion and excep- '
tional ones. That great difficulties and some in-
creased peril have arisen from them was inevitable;
that the superintendents and ottleiali of rail-
ways, as well as their machinery, must have
been most severely tried by such a con-
tllld such an irregularity of traffic
may be conceived; all of which circumstances ought
to be taken into account, when we conceive anger
and deal reprimands to the present defects of railway
management.
The cause of the deplorable accident at Bicester is
plain enough. The person in charge of the points.
thrown into perplexity by his own doubts as to
which line it was infest to direct the train upon, that
perplexity inert-used by a fellow-servant calling out
to rum, held the points firmly to allow the
engine to go one way, and relaxed his hold
in subsequent nervousness, so that the carriages ran
upon the other. here the dreadful catastrophe, with
loss of property and life, depended upon the greater
or less pressure of a nervous mans hand upon a bar
of iron. Indubitably this should be the first danger
obviated. We have never beheld a railway train
entering a crossing, and perceived that its direc-
tion depended altogether not only on the
bused of an individual, but upon that indivi-
dual hand exerting continuous strength —we
have never observed this without a shudder.

Surely science could devise a piece of mechanism,
which by the turn of a button or a spring should
fix and retain the points in a given position, and
plea that change of position in the power of one act
of the will, instead of being the icault of prolonged
physical exertion. Were at pointsman to faint or
stumble at the critical moment, the consequences
would have been the same as those which followed
WILMOT'S perplexity at Iticester.
What the jury observed on this subject is also well
worthy of attention, and borne out by the circum-
stances. But there arc preventives of collision, re-
commended and pressed by the jury upon the
Blaster inquest, which we think a very great mis-
take. We allude to the denunciation of single lines.
There is nothing so much to be desired as that the
great arteries of railroad communication should be
ffillowed out in the veins, and the smaller towns and
remote districts should have their means of commune
cation as well as the great cities and populous dis-
tricts. The arteries are the double and triple lines,
but the veins can be no more than single. The'
small towns and remote districts would never pay
for the expense of a double rail; and if they are to
have steam communication at all, they must have it
it by single lines. To put an anathema upon these,
therefore, is to disinherit and preclude half tho
country of one of the greatest boons of the age.
'llw objection, moreover, to single lines as quite
unfounded. Lines are required in proportion to the
traffic. A single line in Buckinghamshire
is as ample as a quintuple line between
Bermondsey and Loadon-bridge. Crossings must
be used on all roads ; slow trains make
way fur quick ones to pass. Double lines of
rail do not prevent the necessity of trains passing
into sidings. On the other hand, if single lines
offer some danger from the necessary use of sidings,
they are certainly tree from a great many risks sad
perils to which double lines are Roble. These saw*
suggest themselves at once to every one. We aft
say, indeed, that the inhabitants of • Mak
blessed with bet a single line would &ay
are it converted into a double one. It midi be
mach more convenient, and admit of • greater
slumber of trains. But the question. will dm double
line pay? addresses itself to another class equally
interested and fully deserving of being bad We
are sorry, therefore, that whilst eel& 'away
officials were present at the inrestigalions lam el
them were nut consulted by the jar" b the
restive merits, with a view to scennty and profit,
of double and of single lines.

Drama the present autumn we hare in vain
looked for reports of the long speeches at agricultural
meetings frail which we were wont to gather sonic insight into the tone and temper of the agricultural
mind, and its aspect towards landlordism on the
one aide, and the public ou the other. Possibly the
landed magnates and the gentry have been hitherto
enraged in grouse and partridge shooting, while the
farmers have been far more usefully occupied in get-
ting in a full harvest. Meetings of agriculturists
have been held here and there, but they seem to
have taken place for some such practical object as
to witness the operations of a reaping machine, or ,
the like, rather than delude or alarm each other
with sinister prophecies of impending ruin. And it
is a good sign when little is heard of what may be
railed agricultural politics, for it is then certain
farmers are not doing much amiss. Not that we
would venture to affirm that they are content at this
moment, or that they have not many fair and just
cables for dissatisfaction ; but their silence proves
that they have made up their minds to do that