together with Mr. Cubitt, Mr. James Walker, Mr. Sylvester, and others, and was satisfied of their applicability to the purposes of railway traction. He described to the Committee the proper form of the boiler, and the arrangement of the valves, so as to secure complete safety in the working of the locomotive. He was of opinion that such an engine might be constructed as would take forty tons' weight, at the rate of six miles an hour, with perfect ease and safety. On the 25th of April, Mr. George Stephenson was called into the witness-box. It was his first appearance before a Committee of the House of Commons, and he well knew what he had to expect. He was aware that the whole force of the opposition was to be directed against him; and if they could break down his evidence, the canal monopoly might yet be upheld for a time. Many years afterwards, when looking back at his position on this trying occasion, he said: "When I went to Liverpool to plan a line from thence to Manchester, I pledged myself to the directors to attain a speed of ten miles an hour. I said I had no doubt the locomotive might be made to go much faster, but that we had better be moderate at the beginning. The directors said I was quite right; for that if, when they went to Parliament, I talked of going at a greater rate than ten miles an hour, I should put a cross upon the concern. It was not an easy task for me to keep the engine down to ten miles an hour, but it must be done, and I did my best. I had to place myself in that most unpleasant of all positions-the witnessbox of a Parliamentary Committee. I was not long in it, before I began to wish for a hole to creep out at! I could not find words to satisfy either the Committee or myself. I was subjected to the cross-examination of eight or ten barristers, purposely, as far as possible, to bewilder me. Some member of the Committee asked if I was a foreigner, and another hinted that I was mad. But I put up with every rebuff, CHAP. XIX.] EXAMINATION IN COMMITTEE. 229 and went on with my plans, determined not to be put down." Mr. Stephenson stood before the Committee to prove what the public opinion of that day held to be impossible. The self-taught mechanic had to demonstrate the practicability of accomplishing that which the most distinguished engineers of the time regarded as impracticable. Clear though the subject was to himself, and familiar as he was with the powers of the locomotive, it was no easy task for him to bring home his convictions, or even to convey his meaning, to the less informed minds of his hearers. In his strong Northumbrian dialect, he struggled for an utterance, in the face of the sneers, interruptions, and ridicule of the opponents of the measure, and even of the Committee, some of whom shook their heads and whispered doubts as to his sanity, when he energetically avowed that he could make the locomotive go at the rate of twelve miles an hour! It was so grossly in the teeth of all the experience of honourable members, that the man must certainly be labouring under a delusion! And yet his large experience of railways and locomotives, as described by himself to the Committee, entitled this "untaught, inarticulate genius," as he has so well been styled, to speak with confidence on such a subject. Beginning with his experience as brakesman at Killingworth in 1803, he went on to state that he had been appointed to take the entire charge of the steam-engines in 1813, and superintended the railroads connected with the numerous collieries of the Grand Allies from that time downwards. He had laid down or superintended the railways at Borrerton, Mount Moor, Spring Darlington, Bedington, Hetton, and Darlington, besides improving * Speech at Newcastle on the opening of the Newcastle and Darlington Railway. those at Killingworth, South Moor, and Derwent Brook. He had constructed fifty-five steam-engines, of which sixteen were locomotives. Some of these had been sent to France. The only accident that had occurred to any of these engines was on the occasion of the tubes in one of them wearing out, by which a man and boy were slightly scalded. The engines constructed by him for the working of the Killingworth Railroad, eleven years before, had continued steadily at work ever since, and fulfilled his most sanguine expectations. He was prepared to prove the safety of working high-pressure locomotives on a railroad, and the superiority of this mode of transporting goods over all others. As to speed, he said he had recommended eight miles an hour with twenty tons, and four miles an hour with forty tons; but he was quite confident that much more might be done. Indeed, he had no doubt they might go at the rate of twelve miles. As to the charge that locomotives on a railroad would so terrify the horses in the neighbourhood, that to travel on horseback or to plough the adjoining fields would be rendered highly dangerous, the witness said that horses learnt to take no notice of them, though there were horses that would shy at a wheelbarrow. A mail coach was likely to be more shied at by horses than a locomotive. In the neighbourhood of Killingworth, the cattle in the fields went on grazing while the engines passed them, and the farmers made no complaints. Mr. Alderson, who had carefully studied the subject, and was well skilled in practical science, subjected the witness to a protracted and severe cross-examination as to the speed and power of the locomotive, the strokes of the engine, the slipping of the wheels upon the rails, and various other points of detail. Mr. Stephenson insisted that no slipping took place, as attempted to be extorted from him by the CHAP. XIX.] EXAMINATION IN COMMITTEE. 231 counsel. He said: "It is impossible for slipping to take place so long as the adhesive weight of the wheel upon the rail is greater than the weight to be dragged after it." There was a good deal of interruption to the witness's answers by Mr. Alderson, to which Mr. Joy more than once objected. As to accidents, Mr. Stephenson knew of none that had occurred with his engines. There had been one, he was told, at the Middleton Colliery, near Leeds, with a Blenkinsop engine. The driver had been in liquor, and had put a considerable load on the safety valve, so that upon going forward the engine blew up, and the man was killed, But he added, that if proper precautions had been used with that boiler the accident could not have happened. The following cross-examination occurred in reference to the question of speed: "Of course," (he was asked), "when a body is moving upon a road, the greater the velocity the greater the momentum that is generated?" "Certainly." "What would be the momentum of forty tons moving at the rate of twelve miles an hour?" "It would be very great." "Have you seen a railroad that would stand that?" "Yes." 66 "Where?" "Any railroad that would bear going four miles an hour: I mean to say, that if it would bear the weight at four miles an hour, it would bear it at twelve."Taking it at four miles an hour, do you mean to say that it would not require a stronger railway to carry the same weight twelve miles an hour?" "I will give an answer to that. I dare say every person has been over ice when skating, or seen persons go over, and they know that it would bear them at a greater velocity than it would if they went slower; when it goes quick, the weight in a measure ceases." "Is not that upon the hypothesis that the railroad is perfect ?" "It is; and I mean to make it perfect."* * Evidence, p. 203. twelve miles Mr. Alderson had so pressed the point of an hour," and the promoters were so alarmed lest it should appear in evidence that they contemplated any such extravagant rate of speed, that immediately on Mr. Alderson sitting down, Mr. Joy proceeded to re-examine Mr. Stephenson, with the view of removing from the minds of the Committee an impression so unfavourable, and, as they supposed, so damaging to their case. "With regard,” asked Mr. Joy, "to ath se hypothetical questions of my learned friend, they have been all put on the supposition of going twelve miles an hour: now that is not the rate at which, I believe, any of the engines of which you have spoken have travelled?" *No replied Mr. Stephenson, "except as an experiment for a short distance."—" But what they have gone has been three, £ve, or six miles an hour?" "Yes."-" So that those Hypothetical cases of twelve miles an hour do not fall within your general experience?" "They do not." The Committee also seem to have entertained some alarm as to the high rate of speed which had been spoken of, and proceeded to examine the witness further on the subject. They supposed the case of the engine being upset when going at nine miles an hour, and asked what, in such a case, would become of the cargo astern. To which the witness replied Bat it would not be upset. One of the members of the Committee pressed the witness a little further. He put the llowing case:-"Suppose, now, one of these engines to be going along a railroad at the rate of nine or ten miles Your, and that a cow were to stray upon the line and the way of the engine; would not that, think you, very awkward circumstance?” “Yes,” replied the with a twinkle in his eye, "very awkward indeed |