The Press., 1891-02-26
(Norwich Bulletin.) ONLY 6 YEARS AGO.

A REauN1soENoE OF THE EARLY psgs OF
 RAILRo1R-
 Some time ago James HBriggs of Brook. lyn, N. Y, wrote to The New York Tri- bune:
 "I send you paragraph of June 27th, 1927, on the contemplated railroad from Boston to Albany, copied from The Boston Courier, then edited by Joseph T. Buck ingham, for many years the leading editor of New England, and one of the most pro- gressive in the country. Mir. Bucking- ham wrote :-sAlcibiades or some other great man of antiquity. it is sad, cut of his dogs tail that quid nui,cs might not become extinct from lack of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up project for rail- road from Boston to Albany-a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rule in arithmetic, to be imprac- ticable, and at an expense little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts and which, if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as railroad from Ros- ton to the moon.' e.@-
 ''Would any intelligent man now think that an editor of 8 great ionrnal wonld thus put himself on record sixty.three years ago? But Mir. Buckingham was not alone in his opposition to the railroad. In The Pittsfeld, Mass, Sun in 1892 there was series of articles published for and against the proposed work by two of the most intellectual men living at that day in western Massachusetts, ,-Theodore Sedge- wick of Stock bridge in favor of the road, and Henry Shaw of Lanesboro in opposi- ton to it. One showed by facts and fig. nres that the railroad would be great benefit and success, and the other by facts and figures that it would be a great failure and prove disastrous to the state and to all individuals who engaged in it.
 "The credit of the state was loaned to the company. The railroad was built it was success it has for years paid seven, eight, and ten per cent. dividends, and The Tribune of to-day says that the stock of the Boston $ Albany road sold at the stock board in Boston on the 9th instant at 214 and 216, higher than any other rail. road stock in the United States. The road is the largest taxpayer on real estate in the state, having paid last year nearly E$780, Quo; and the roadbed, five rods in number of miles of railroad in the United | now is afraid of new things, and who says the world does not move P"
 It was on the issue presented by thif road proposition that Marcus Morton de feated Edward Everett for governor oi Massachusetts in 184O by one vote. Ed ward Everett being stalwart champion ol the new road. and his opponents having scared the farmers by telling them tha1 Everett, in pledging the faith of ;he stats to the assistance of the road, had virtually put mortgage on their farms, which wera liable to be sold away from them almos any day.
 Local interest is given to this reminis cence of what no doubt seems to all ou younger readers very remote past, iron the fact that the letter of Mir. Briggs il The Tribune was handed us, the othe day. by MT. L.. w. Carroll of this city who was g resident of Massachusetts at tn time, and who well remembers, not onl the Morton election, but the virulent an' narrow opposition which was made to tn railroad by such men as Editor Buckine ham.