The Sun.
London, England, 1840-09-16 00:00:00

Zfn>

LONDON:
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1840.

We regret to see, within these two days, some
'urther accidents on railways. If we refer to them

here it is not to exaggerate them, or to depreciate
an invention which must, we think, come into

general use, but to excite the Directors to greater
caution, and induce the public to operate with and
on them to the same end. At present, the art

is comparatively new, and, whatever may be its
ultimate capabilities, great care ought to be em-
ployed in bringing them forth. After a line has
been for some time used—after the engineers are
known, from experience, to be steady and trust-
worthy men after all the many servants
of the Company employed to lay down and
move the points are well drilled into
co-operation--after a continued success war-
rants confidence, the engines may be driven with
great speed ; but in the infancy of every railroad, till
the whole crew is well organized, safety should be
more studied than velocity. The Eastern Counties
Railroad is as yet only in partial operation. The
people engaged on it can hardly know one another,
and they ought not to think in the first instance
of rivalling the speed which has been obtained on
the longer established Birmingham or Great
Western. With the most friendly feelings to-
wards these majestic undertakings, we must press
on the Directors the necessity of using the greatest
care, lest they bring them into disrepute, inflict a
serious injury on the shareholders, and retard the
progress of the country for half a century.
It is hardly our business to advert to the me-
chanical improvements—such as deeper flanges to
confine the carriages on the rail, or any contrivance
for the purpose—such as connecting the fore and
hind wheels of each carriage by a moveable joint,
instead of a fixed bar, by which the friction would
be much lessened—such as placing in each car-
riage a power to cast it loose from the train,
or to apply a drag, and impede the pro-
gress of the whole ; no doubt there are
many such contrivances which will contri-
bute to the security of railways, and will make
that mode of travelling the safest as well as
the speediest which man has yet invented. None
of these, however, could have prevented the latest
accident, which seems to have been caused by
the want of common care on the part of the
engine-driver. We must confine ourselves to the
influence of moral improvements ; and as we
think the Legislature and the Government can-
, not be relied on, either to plan them or to enforce
them, we are perhaps bound to let no opportunity

escape of showing the public how they may effect
them. To make the Directors answerable for every
damage they may cause will, we believe, be one
effectual method of making them careful.
They have, as we have before remarked,
a strong pecuniary interest in preserving their
own carriages from damage, and the more costly
they are made the more careful the Directors
are likely to be. Very rude people will, out of
respr et to their own decent clothes, be much
more polite and civil on holidays than on working
days. A driver of a massive rough waggon cares
for nothing, because his machine can scarcely he
injured ; but the owner or driver of a finely painted
coach would risk his neck to save it from a scratch.
To encourage the Directors to have fine and costly
carriages, which will be damaged 1)3 the same mis-
chance as breaks the necks of the passengers, will
tend to make them careful. Whatever moralists
may say, the use of luxuries has in many instances
tempered the rude passions, and checked the haste
and violence of man.
As the railway shareholders constitute in gene-
ral large and opulent bodies of men, some counte-
racting societies should, perhaps, be formed for
individual protection. When an accident causes
loss of life, a Coroner's inquest may levy, as a
deodand, a large fine on the railway proprietors.
The law, which is the power of the community,
is then brought to bear against them. But when
an individual is only wounded or maimed, owing to
the present state of our law, he may find it extremely
difficult to obtain rediess against an opulent rail-
way company. The longest purse may, in such
cases, carry the day. We hold it, however, to be
essential that the Directors should be compelled to
make a pecuniary compensation to every person who
may be wounded or maimed by the inefficiency or
negligence of their servants ; and to insure that, it
may perhaps be thought advisable to form a so-
ciety to enforce reparation. Such a society would
operate as an insurance against injury. A small sum
subscribed by each of the many thousand persons
who travel by railways, to form a fund for exacting
by law, nom every railway company, a repara.
1