The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-18 00:00:00

LOCKING IN ON RAILROADS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE.

Sir,—Since the letter upon railroads, which you
were good enough to insert in your paper, I have had
some conversation with two gentlemen officially con •
nected with the Great Western. Though nothing
could be more courteous than their manner, nor more
intelligible than their arguments, I remain unshaken
as to the necessity of keeping the doors open.
There is, in the' first place, the effect of imagination,
the idea that all escape is impossible, that (let what will
happen) you must sit quiet in first class No. 2, whe-
ther they are pounding you into a jam, or burning you
into a cinder, or crumbling ycu into a human pow-
der. These excellent Directors, versant in wood and
metal, seem to require that the imagination should be
sent by some other conveyance, ,and that only loads
of impassioned, unintellectual flesh and bloat •
should be darted along on the 'Western rail ; whereas,
the female homo is a screaming, parturient, interjec-
tional, hysterical animal, whose delicacy and timidity
monopolists even (much as it may surprise them)
must be taught to consult. The female, in all proba-
bility, never would jump out ; but she thinks she may
jump out when she pleases, and this is intensely
comfortable.

There- are two sorts of .dangers which hang over
railroads. The one retail dangers, where individuals
only are concerned ; the other, wholesale dangers,
where the whole train, or a considerable part of it, is
put in jeopardy. For the first danger there is a re-
medy in the prudence of individuals.; for the second
there is none. No man need be drunk, nor need he
jump out when the carriage is in motion; but in the
present state of science it is impossible to guard
effectually againit the fracture of the axletree or the
explosion of the engine; and if the safety of the one
party cannot be consulted but by the danger of the
other, if the foolish cannot be restrained but by the
unjust incarceration of the wise, the prior considera-
tion is due to those who have not the remedy for the
evil in their own hands. _ _ _

But the truth is—and so (after a hundred mono-
polising experiments on public patience) the railroad
Directors will find it—there can be no other depend-
ence for the safety of the public than the care which
every human being is inclined to take of his own life
and limbs. Everything beyond this is the mere lazy
tyranny of monopoly, which makes no distinction be-
tween human beings and brown paper parcels. If
riding were a monopoly, as travelling in carriages is
now become, there are many gentlemen whom I see
riding in the Park upon such false principles, that I
am sure the cantering and galloping Directors would
strap them, in the ardour of their affection, to the
saddle, padlock them to the stirrups, or compel them
to ride behind a policeman of the stable ; and nothing
but a motion -from O'Brien, or an order from Glad-
stone, could release them.

Let the Company stick up all sorts of cautions and
notices, within their carriages and without; but after
that, no doors locked. If one door is allowed to be
locked, ;;the other will soon be so too : , there is no
other security to the public than absolute prohibition
of the practice. The Directors and agents of the Great
W6tern are individually excellent men; but the mo-
ment men meet in public boards they cease to be col-
lectively excellent. The friend of morality becomes
less, as the individual contributors increase in num-
ber. I do not accuse such respectable men of any
wilful violation of truth, but the memoir which they
are about to present will be, without the scrupulous
cross-examination of a Committee of the house of
CoMMons, mere waste paper.
But the most absurd of all legislative enactments is
this hemiplegian law—an Act of Parliament to pro-
tect one side of the body and not the other. If the wheel
come off on the right, the open door is uppermost,
and every one is saved. If from any sudden avalanche
on the.road the carriage is prostrated to the left, the
locked door is upperMOst, all escape is impossible, and
the railroad martyrdom be6ins.
Leave me to.escape in the best way I can, as the i
fire-officers very kindly permit me to do. - I know
very well the danger of getting out on the off-side ; ;
but escape is the affair -of a moment ; suppose a train
to have passed at that moment, I know lam safe
from any other trains for twenty minutes or half an
hour ; and if I do get out on the off-side I do not re-
main in the valley of death between the two trains,
but am over to the opposite bank 'hi an instant—only
half roasted, or merely hroWned, certainly not done
enough for the Great Western Directors.
On Saturday morning last the wheel of the public
carriage in which a friend of mine was travelling be-
gan to smoke, but was pacified by several buckets of
water, and proceeded. After five more miles the
whole carriage was full of smoke, the train was with
difficulty stopped, and the flagrant vehicle removed.
The axle was nearly in two, and in another mile
would have been severed.

Railroad travelling is, a delightful improvement
of human life. Man is become a bird ; he can fly
longer and quicker than a Solan goose. The mama
rushes 60 miles in two hours to the aching finger of
her conjugating and declining grammar boy. The
early Scotchman scratches himself in the morning
mists of the north, and has his porridge in Piccadilly
before the setting sun. The Puseyite priest, after a
rush of 100 miles, appears with his little volume of
nonsense at the breakfast of his bookseller. Every-
thing is near, every thing is immediate—time, dis-
tance, and delay are abolished. But, though charm-
ing and fascinating as all this is, we must not shut
our eyes to the price we shall have to pay for it.
There will be every three or four years some dreadful
massacre—whole trains will be hurled down a preci
pice, and 200 or 300 persons will be killed on the
spot. There will be every now and then a great com-
bustion of human bodies, as there has been at Paris;
then all the newspapers up in arms—a thousand regu-
lations, forgotten as soon as the Directors dare—loud
screams of the velocity whistle—monopoly locks and
bolts, as before.
The locking plea of Directors is philanthropy, and
I admit that to guard men from the commission of
moral evil is as philanthrophical as to prevent physical
suffering. There is, I allow, a strong propensity in
mankind to travel on railroads without paying, and
to lock mankind in till they have completed their
share of the contract is benevolent, because it guards
the species from degrading and immoral conduct, but
to burn or crush a whole train, merely to prevent a.
few immoral insides from not paying, is, I hope, a
little more than Ripon or Gladstone will bear.
We have been, up to this point, very careless of our
railway regulations. The first person of rank who is
killed will put everything in order, and produce a code
of the most careful rules.. I hope it will not be one
of the bench of Bishops ; but should it be so des-
tined, let the burnt Bishop—the unwilling Latimer—
remember that, however painful gradual concoction
by fire may be, his death will produce unspeakable
benefit to the public. Even. Sodor and Man will
be better than' nothing. From that moment the bad
effects of the monopoly are destroyed ; no' more fatal
deference to the Directors; no despotic incarceration;
no barbarous inattention to the anatomy and physio-
logy of the human body; no commitment to loco-
motive prisons' without warrant. We shall then find
it possible "Voyager libre sans murk."
SYDNEY SMITH.

FACTORY FORTIFICATIONS.—We see that it is stated
in the pamphlet of William Dodd, illustrative of the Factory
System, that the factories of Messrs. Strutt, of Derby, at
Belper and Milford, form regular fortifications. " I have made
(he says) a few trips to the large cotton factories of Messrs.
Strutt, which present the most singular appearance of any
establishment I have met with in the whole course of my
travels. This is the principal, if not the only firm carrying on
the cotton trade in this neighbourhood ; besides their large
factories in Belper, they have one at Milford, about a mile and
a half from the town. The factories here are surrounded by
fortificationr; and I have been told that the other is guarded
in a similar manner. The whole length of the works is about
1 one hundred yards, and they extend along both sides of the
road. Connecting the factories is a gallery across the road,
about thirteen feet wide, supported by three arches. In this
gallery are loop-holes for cannon, small arms, &c , which com-
pletely command all the approaches to the mills by the road.
One part of their works is made bomb-proof, with loop holes
'similar to the above. The opposite building is nearly sur-
rounded by water, over which a small bridge is thrown from the
road, which, I was told, could be easily removed in case of
danger. The river is made to cover two sides of the works ; in
addition to which there is a high wall nearly all round, with
many hundred loop-holes, from which those within might fire
upon any crowds assembled outside. There are also other
means of protection, which are too numerous to mention in this
letter." We are not aware of any manufacturing establishment
either in Yorkshire or in Lancashire that has its " Fortifica-
tions ;" and we believe that those of Belper and Milford are in
this respect, if correctly represented, perfectly unique.—Leeds
Mercury.
The London correspondent of the Dublin Mail says
" The report gains currency that Lord De Grey means very
speedily to retire from the government of Ireland. The Duke,
of Buccleuch, it is supposed, will be Earl De Grey's successor.'
THE Bisnor OF RIFON.—We understand the
family of the Lord Bishop of Ripon have been thrown into the
greatest state of distress, in consequence of the lamented death
of Lord Congleton, her Ladyship's father. The family were at
the Palace when the distressing event occurred. having only a
few days ago arrived there from London.—York Courant.
We learn from Bohemia that, in the night of the
30th ult., afire which originated in a stable at Hirschberg, in
that country, spread with such irresistible force and rapidity,
that 110 houses were destroyed, and the rest of the town was
only, saved with the greatest difficulty.