Mr. Lushington-are running upon false foundations. There can be no doubt of the fact stated by him in support of his favourite megatheria, that it is to the rivalry with the broad-gauge line that we owe the amelioration of its opponent in respect of speed. We owe that benefit undoubtedly to Mr. Brunel's great engines B.; the smaller ones have been put upon their mettle, and now Mr. Stephenson is ready to back a small engine for 10,0007. against one from the big-gauge factories. Can any one suppose that the impulse once given, the people in England will allow the narrow-gauge engines to crawl, when they have driven their opponents off the road? It is not so,--no, not in a contest of busses. Give the great public the advantage once, and it is an outrage to their common sense to suppose they will forego it. What is the noise and battle made about now? -About the loss of time occasioned by this very break of gauge. Because, then, people say, the narrow gauge completely established over the country will do our work, convey ourselves, our goods, our cattle, our coals, better than the broad gauge, who has a right to say that the narrow gauge is "deliberately re-establishing a lower standard of railroad benefits?" A gig is a lower standard than a chaise-and-four, but if the gig accommodates you equally well-if you can afford to keep three gigs in various parts of the country at the cost, and to do three times the service, of the larger vehicle, who is to say, "Let us have chaises-and-four everywhere?" Only the most prodigal, generous, and imaginative economists, surely. And the question is not whether you can make the grandest dash and figure with the big carriage on race-day, but which is the useful vehicle for all the days of the year? And upon this head comes forward a pamphleteer with the fatal signature of £. s. d., whose arguments are addressed, in the most pathetic manner, to the broad-gauge proprietors themselves; and who says that Mr. Brunel "has learned to shave on their chins." "Remark, gentlemen," says this shrewd £. s. d., "that in no instance has a company for forming a broad-gauge line formed itself except under the shadow of the Great West ern Company, promoted by its director, designed by its engineer, and supported by its money." The whole country declares against the magnificent gauge. And what is the cause? £. s. d. is the cause, "On every mile of the 176 worked by the London and Birmingham (narrow gauge) Railway, there remains applicable to a dividend, after paying all charges upon the revenue, per half-year, the sum of 20951. "On every mile of the 140 miles worked by the Grand Junction (narrow gauge), there remains applicable to a dividend, after paying all charges on the the sum of 2160l. revenue, "On every mile of the 240 miles worked by the Great Western (broad gauge) Railway, the grand trunk line westwards, there remains applicable to a dividend, after paying all charges on the revenue, the sum of 7681." Such are the returns of profits on the broad and the narrow gauge lines, which £. s. d. submits to the consideration of the shareholding world-and of the Great Western shareholders in particular. Are they willing, he asks, to receive six per cent, at the best, for their capital, when laid out on the narrow-gauge lines it may be made to return fourteen? Are they willing, in order to perfect their scheme in the West, where they must form lines over districts less favourable to commerce than those which they work at present, to take upon themselves the responsibility of twenty millions more? Is their system so good that they can hold it against the stronger, the cheaper, the more profitablethe national system, in a word-of the narrow gauge ? They can't even, as Mr. Harding argues, give fair scope and advantage to the people in their own country. In connexion with the enormous trunk line the branches must be enormous. If it be difficult to make the great stations pay now, how much more will it be to establish small ones, which henceforth ought to be a condition of all railroads? The small tradesman, the poor village, the small farmer can't afford an outlet for their goods which is to be purchased at such a tremendous expense of road-making. These have as good a right to communicate with the main railroad stream now-a-days, as it to be fed by their contribution. It is no longer a convenience, as we have said; a luxury, like the Quicksilver coach, to be adopted by those who could afford it, while the Old Blue was travelling for the vulgar at six miles an hour-but a right to which every member of the English industrial republic ought to lay claim. And grant that the big engine is swifter at an express and the big first carriage more comfortable than the small (though even this is a question, as many gentlemen who have run away with interesting young ladies in a narrow-gauge coupé, with two seats, declare the conveyance the most agreeable in the world):-but grant that the big engine is the swifter and this is all you get. That swiftness has so enchanted the most brilliant of the broad-gauge advocates that he calls it, in a noble image, "equivalent to the creation of time," and so holds up the broad gauge as the sign of human advancement, and the narrow, by consequence, as the type of the degradation of mankind-a deliberate re-establishment of a lower standard for every benefit which railroads confer on mankind. Why so? You have not given this system fair play. As a partial system, if its benefits have been prodigious, they become incredibly multiplied when it is a national scheme. It is "twice blessed" for the shareholder and the traveller. It is a spring of wealth as yet undeveloped for the one; for make the narrow, or any gauge scheme, a national one, and there is no knowing, no calculating how vast its results may be. Look at its progress since it was born fifteen years ago. The petitions of the university bigwigs against it, and the declarations of the engineers who published the "able document" condemning it, are scarcely more absurd than Mr. Brunel's declaration, that the Great Western Line "would not interfere" with the other lines in England. The West must and ought to interfere with the North, and Irish pigs to travel over the length and breadth of the country as well as Durham coal, or Suffolk oxen, or Welsh iron, or Cornish tin. Let us grant (though Mr. Stephenson is there with 10,000l. to say no) that the broad-gauge racer can beat the narrow-gauge engine. What then? The narrow-guage express can still travel fifty miles an hour-the narrow-gauge trains go to this day as quick as the broad-and is the nation such a fool as to deprive itself of the benefits which it has got? Make it a national scheme, and you have the whole country in hand. Never mind about the expresses. Take the gauge which already occupies seven-eighths of the railroad country; not because it is three times as cheap and profitable as its opponent; not because the Great Western shareholders themselves would profit immeasurably by annexation to the railroad republic, but because the narrow-gauge does Occupy seven-eighths of the country. One thing is clear, the small unpaying line can never swallow the great productive one: the broad-gauge line may become narrow gauge without hindrance to the commerce of the country, the narrow gauge can never become broad. But a period is, perhaps, at hand when large and small engines shall disappear altogether; when Mr. Stephenson's new galloper, backed at 10,000l. against twice his weight; when the Mammoth engines, big and beautiful as they are, splendidly rushing down their broad streams of iron, shall give place to something still more rapid and powerful-the Atmospheric Principle, which Mr. Brunel believes in. Then let them be rolled to the National Museum, and take their places beside Henry VIII.'s gun, or the figure of the dethroned Jupiter, or the statute of the repealed Corn-laws. Meanwhile there never was a clearer moral, as we take it to be, got out of any series of volumes, and pamphlets, and inquiries, than that the railroad system of the country ought to be one; and we dutifully concur in the opinion submitted to her majesty by her dutiful Commissioners : "That the gauge of four feet eight inches and a half be declared by the legis lature to be the gauge to be used in all public railways now under construction, or hereafter to be constructed, in Great Britain." B.G. and the N.G. A few words on the Gauge Dispute, 743 Balzac, H. De. The Pride of a Spoiled Beauty, Chap. I. 46; Chap. II. and Conclusion, 180 Beauty, the Pride of a Spoiled. Adapted Bekentnisse von Uhlich, review of, 694 Press on the History of a Literary Man, and the Chances of the Literary Profession. In a Letter to the Rev. Francis Sylvester at Rome, from Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Esq. 332 Borrow, George, The Bible in Spain, 379 British Poetry, Past and Present Con dition of, 577; Part II. and Conclusion, 708 Brother of the Press on the History of a Literary Man, Laman Blanchard, and the Chances of the Literary Profession. In a Letter to the Rev. Francis Sylvester at Rome, from Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Esq., 332 Cabinet, Mysteries of the, 121 Cabinet and Sir Robert Peel, What is the Position of? 369 Caged Lark, the, 740 Campaign, the Late, and the Sikhs, 606 Childrens' Books reviewed by Michael Chimes for the New Year, 1 Colony, Life in a; or, the Old Judge. The Lone House. By the Author of Sam Slick the Clockmaker, The Attaché, &c. 505 Common Lodging-house, 342 Condition, Past and Present, of British Poetry, 577; Part II. and Conclusion, 708 Contemporary Orators, No. VI. The Right Hon. T. B. Macaulay, 77; No. VII. The Right Hon. Sir James Graham, 136; No. VIII. Lord Palmerston, 317; No. IX. Earl Grey, 466, Lord Morpeth, 474; No. X. Mr. Sheil, 728 Counsel Mal-à-Propos, 288 Crime, Philosophy of, with Illustrations from Familiar History. No. I. William Horne, 7; No. II. Francis David Stirn, 235 Earl Grey. Contemporary Orators, No. Education in the Army, 719 Ernest Walkinworm's Opinion of Seville. False Alarm. A True Story, 232 Felix Summerly's Home Treasury, review of, 495 Female Authorship, 460 From the Ger A Legend of Francis David Stirn, 235 Gammer Gurton's Story-Books, revised by Ambrose Merton, Gent., review of, 495 Gelnhausen, the Legend of. From the History of the Twelfth Century, 143 Old Traveller, 269 Letter from Rippoldsan, 211 Letter to Oliver Yorke, Esq. on the His- Life in a Colony; or, the Old Judge. The Lone House. By the Author of Lodging-House, the Common, 342 Lord Palmerston. Contemporary Ora- Lorette, the Village of, and the New Set- Love, Present and Past, 226 Macaulay, Right Hon. T. B. Contem- Manners, Traditions, and Superstitions Marengo, the Campaign of, 545 292 Men of Letters, Public Patronage of, 58 Milly L A Tale of Fact in Hum- Ministers, the Position of, 246 G. Gervinus, review of, 694 Mr. Newman, his Theories and Charac- Mr. Sheil. Contemporary Orators. No. Modern History, Arnold's Lectures on, 596 Modern Painters, &c. 358 Morgan Rattler on Railways, 97 Morpeth, Lord. Contemporary Orators. Murillo; or, the Painter without Am- Musæus, 437 Mysteries of the Cabinet, 121 Napoleon, Principal Campaigns in the Neue und doch alte Feinde, von Johannes Newcastle, Margaret Lucas, duchess of, 292 Newman, Mr.; his Theories and Cha- New Settlement of Vale Cartier, and the New Year's Chimes, I Noël, Le Jeu de. From the Notes of an Notes of an Old Traveller. Le Jeu de Ob Schrift? Ob Geist? Verantwortung Of Railways. By Morgan Rattler, Esq. Of the Spains and the Spaniards. By Old House, Anecdote about an, 434 On Beggars, 666 On a late French Trial, 621 On some Illustrated Children's Books. a Letter to Oliver Yorke, Esq., 43 Our Chimes for the New Year, 1 Patronage, Public, of Men of Letters, 58 Philosophy of Crime, with Illustrations from Familiar History. No. I. Wil- Poetry, Past and Present Condition of British, 577; Part II. Conclusion, 708 Position of Sir Robert Peel and his Ca Practical Cook. By J. Bregion and Anne Present and Past Love, 226 Progress and Rise of the Sikhs, 478 to Cairo. Redding, Cyrus. Velasco; or, Memoirs The Bible in Spain. By George Rippoldsan, a Letter from, 211 Sallust. Latin Pamphleteers, 194 |