Next the Liverpool
and Manchester line was projected. Oh, then, what bitter opposition to
the national benefactors, and the good of man!
Awake from the tomb echoes of dead Cant.
"The revolving wheels might move the engine on a rail; but what would
that avail if they could not move them in the closet, and on a
mathematical paper? Railways would be bad for canals, bad for morals, bad
for highwaymen, bad for roadside inns: the smoke would kill the
partridges ('Aha! thou hast touched us nearly,' said the country
gentlemen), the travellers would go slowly to their destination, but
swift to destruction." And the _Heavy Review,_ whose motto was _"Stemus
super_ turnpikes," offered "to back old Father Thames against the
Woolwich railway for any sum. And Black Will, who drove the next heaviest
ephemeral in the island, told a schoolboy, who now writes these pages,
"there's nothing can ever be safe at twenty miles an hour, without 'tis a
bird in the air;" and confirmed it with an oath. Briefly, buzz! buzz!
buzz!
Gray was crushed, Trevethick driven out of the country, stout Steevie
thwarted, badgered, taunted, and even insulted, and bespattered with
dirt--I might say with dung, since his opponents discharged their own
brains at him by speech and writing.
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