The Sun. — 1837-10-18 (London, England)

BIRMINGHA GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY.  In reply to various attacks which have been made upon the management of the Grand Junction Railway in different newspapers, the following apparently authorised vindication has appeared in a Contemporary : " The Grand Junction Railway, exclusive of its merits as a work unequalled in extent and utility, has solid and tangible claims to the kindly consideration of Birmingham. We need not point to the pecuniary advantages that have already resulted to the town from its opening—to the crowds of strangers that it has attracted hither, and that, too, at a period when, from the unexampled pressure on trade, retail as well as wholesale, any influx of trade, however trifling was to be received with gratitude. Had inquiry on the subject been instituted, it would have at once been found that the reports circulated in the metropolis to the injury of the railway, were in nearly every instance groundless : that the statements made had seldom any foundation except in the misinformation of the writer ; that instead of any imputation of remissness, the Directors had in reality received, both from the public and the shareholders, the highest commendations. Since the railway has been opened—no further back than July—some fifty thousand individuals have been conveyed, the greater part the entire length of the line, in a manner altogether unexampled for convenience, cheapness, and expedition. There have been on a few occasions, a very few, an accidental delay. Still, taking the whole of these into account, the journey from Birmingham to Liverpool has, on an average of trips, fallen short of five hours. If the Directors have been guilty of an error, it goes to this extent, no more— that they calculated the journey at four hours and a half, to which, there is no doubt, it will very soon be reduced. As to the paucity of engines, before that is made a ground of inculpation, it would be well to estimate the difficulty with which a supply of engines is procurable. In Birmingham, the spot where the steam-engine originated, there is not a single Company or individual competent to the making of a locomotive. It is said the Company ought not to have opened the railway until every point and particular was completed. Who say so ? The public ? Do they count for nothing the high benefit of suoh an undertaking, whether for pleasure or business, that they would willingly have consented to forego it for another six months, and that without the smallest ground of expedience or necessity ? Nothing need be said of the thousands that the opening of the railway has added to the funds of the shareholders, though even that circumstance enhances the value of the opening, inasmuch as it will enable the Directors to execute improvements which otherwise they might not have ventured upon."—Aris's Bir»zingham Gazette.  The amount of subscriptions to the monument of ' the late Duke of Gordon, is about 2,500/. An American paper gives the following as the summary of Louis Buonaparte's opinion on those national murders called war : " I have been as enthusiastic and joyful as any one after a victory ; but I also confess that even then the sight of a battle has not only struck me with horror, but even turned me sick ; and now that I am advanced in life I cannot understand, any more than I could at fifteen years of age, how beings who call themselves reasonable, and who have so much foresight, can employ this short existence, not in loving and aiding each other, and passing through it as gently as possible, but, on the contrary, in endeavouring to destroy each _other, as if Time did not himself do this with sufficient rapidity. What I thought at fifteen years of age I still think : war and the pain of death, which society draws upon itself, are but organised barbarisms, an inheritance of the savage state, disguised .or ornamented by ingenious institutions and false eloquence." Tho American paper adds :—" It was for the poisession of such feelings as are here evinced that Napoleon dispossessed him of the sceptre of Holland, where bis amiable disposition endeared him to the people whom he governed, and rendered their thraldom less insupportable than the French Emperor intended after the fall of the Netherlands."