The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-06-29 00:00:00

DATES AT LIVERPOOL.
Indirect.

Indirect.! Direct.
Feb. 22 Lima
May 16 Maranham Aprills
May 24 Mauritius
May 12 Mobile
March Monte Video ..
May 3 New Orleans
April 22 New York June 8
June 4 Pernambuco
April 25 Rio Janeiro May 9'
May 28 Savannah
May 21 St. Helena
May 22 Valparaiso
May . 21 Vera Cruz

Australia
Bahia....

Barbadoes
Bombay
B. Ayres
Calcutta
C. G. Hope.
Charleston .
China
Demerara
Havana
Jamaica
La Gnayra

April 9,

May
May 32
April 27
May 30
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May 15

June 2
May 6
March 2y
May IV

THE FIRST RAILWAYS AND THEIR OPPONENTS.—
When Jacquard, the inventor of the wonderful loom that
bears his name, was arrested and carried to Paris, with his
machine, Carnot, in the presence of Napoleon, roughly
said to him, " Are you the man that pretends to do that
impossibility—to tie a knot in a stretched string ?" His
compatriots of Lyons, the impossibility being surmounted,
broke his machines in 1806, and raised a statue to his me-
mory in 1840. All those who are in advance of public
opinion must bear ridicule or persecution. In 1825, th*
Quarterly Review thus ridiculed the notion of certain en-
gineers, Telford amongst the number, that a railway en-
gine could go eighteen or twenty miles an hour : " The
gross exaggerations of the powers of the locomotive steant
engine, or, to speak English, the steam carriage, may de-
lude for a time, but must end in the mortification of those
concerned. . . . . We should as soon expect the people •
of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one
of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the
mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate." In that
year, the common belief was that railways were altogether
delusions and impositions. The Liverpool and Manches-
ter Railway was opposed in Parliament with every form of
invective. One member, in 1825, declared his opinion
" that a railway could not enter into successful competi-
tion with a canal. Even with the best locomotive engine
the average rate would be but three miles and a half per
hour, which was slower than the canal conveyance.""
(Hansard, 2nd series, vol. iv. p. 853.) Another assertion,
which Mr. (luskisson was obliged to meet doubtfully and
apologetically, was, " that there were two or three canals
which were sufficient for every purpose of commerce in
the districts through which the railway was to pass." Let
us be just to what we have been accustomed to decry as
the dark ages. Let us be tolerant to those who impri-
soned Galileo, and rewarded Columbus with chains.. If
there be a reality in any discovery—a true thing, and not
a sham,—if there be strength, or utility, or beauty, in any
work of mind,—it will live and fnictify, whatever critics,
or orators, or inquisitors, or even kings, may do to crush
it. And so it is with railways. On the 15th September,
1830, the first passenger line, the Liverpool and Man-
chester Railway, was opened. The conveyance of passen-
gers appears originally to have been an inferior considera-
Con to the conveyance of goods; and the Directors mo-
destly anticipated that one half of the passengers travelling
by coaches between the two towns might venture on the
railway. In the first year after the opening there were
conveyed four hundred and forty-five thousand passen-
gers; in the year ending Ist July, 1845, the passengers so
conveyed amounted to eight hundred and ninety-seven.
thousand. On the 24th April, 1847, there has been a
total expended on the railways of the United : rivw?gloo,
seventy-eight millions sterling; and in the t call\ck
~ , .t*
12
aggregate receipt upon these railways was one died in& -% IN .1)
sixty thousand pounds, being a total exceeding*Krait_
lions sterling per annum, for the conreyan I , . _ - „yet
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G6*-14aszellg --- - QN
and goode.—The Land we Lire in.
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