One-third of the Passengers . 30,240
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126,780 pounds
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Annual expenses . . . . . 385,000 pounds
Returns. . . . . . . . 126,780
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Annual deficiency . . . . 258,220 pounds
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To meet an outlay of 7,500,000 pounds.

"But the probability is that canals would reduce their rates one-half; and
thus, competing wholesomely, extinguish the railway. The coach-masters would
do the same thing--run for twelve months at half the present fares, and then
not one man in his senses would risk his bones on the railway. The
innkeepers would follow a course precisely similar, and give nice smoking
dinners, foaming tankards and bottles of beeswing at so cheap a rate, and
meet their customers with so good humoured faces, and do so many of those
kind offices that legions would flock to the hospitable road. And while all
this was going on, and the thousands of men which the authors of this
ridiculous scheme had expected to send upon the parish were thriving, the
solitary stranger who had nobody to tell him better would go swinging at the
tail of the engine, bumping first on the iron plates on this side and then on
the iron plates on that side; and if he escaped being scalded to death by the
bursting of his engine, or having all his bones broken by collision with
another, he would be fain to rest for the night within some four bare walls
and gnaw a mouldy crust which he brought in his pocket, or, as an alternative
of luxury, wade some ten miles through the mire, and feast upon a rasher of
rusty bacon and a tankard of the smallest ale at the nearest hedge alehouse."