At last, when, after the manner of
men, they had manured their benefactor well, they consented to reap him.
Railways prevailed, and increased, till lo and behold a Prime Minister
with a spade delving one in the valley of the Trent. The tide turned;
good working railways from city to city became an approved investment of
genuine capital, notwithstanding the frightful frauds and extortion to
which the projectors were exposed in a Parliament which, under a new
temptation, showed itself as corrupt and greedy as any nation or age can
parallel.
When this sober state of things had endured some time, there came a year
that money was loose, and a speculative fever due in the whirligig of
time. Then railways bubbled. New ones were advertised, fifty a month, and
all went to a premium. High and low scrambled for the shares, even when
the projected line was to run from the town of Nought to the village of
Nothing across a goose common. The flame spread, fanned by prospectus and
advertisement, two mines of glowing fiction, compared with which the
legitimate article is a mere tissue of understatements; princes sat in
railway tenders, and clove the air like the birds whose effigies surmount
their armorials; our stiffest Peers relaxed into Boards; Bishops warned
their clergy against avarice, and buttered Hudson an inch thick for
shares; and turned their little aprons into great pockets; men, stainless
hitherto, put down their infants, nurses included, as independent
subscribers, and bagged the coupons, _capturi tartaros.
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