they should be conveyed at a higher rate."

In the following year the Liverpool and Manchester Bill was carried, and in
1830 the career of the civilizing locomotive commenced, but it took many more
years to convince "Practical men" that the Railway would successfully compete
with the Coach and Canal.

When, in 1831, the scheme of a Railway between London and Birmingham was made
public, a very clever pamphlet appeared under the title of "Beware the
Bubbles," in which we find the following comical prognostications of the
results of Railways:--

"After all, what advantage does the London and Birmingham Railway hold out?
Only one,--celerity of motion; and, after all, the ten miles an hour is
absolutely slower than the coaches, some of which go as fast as eleven or
twelve miles an hour; and, with the length of time that the engine and its
cumbrous train requires ere it can stop, and the other contingencies, there
would be little difference in the time of a twelve miles an hour coach and a
fifteen miles an hour engine, supposing twenty or thirty stoppages, to pick
up little parcels, between London and Birmingham. The conveyance is not so
safe as by coach."

After enumerating a series of theoretical dangers, he proceeds. "Another
consideration, which would deter invalids, ladies, and children from making
use of the Railway, would be want of accommodation along the line, unless the
Directors of the Railway chose to build inns at their own expense. But those
inns the Directors would have, in great part, to support, because they would
be out of the way of any business except that arising from the Railway, and
that would be trifling. Commercial travellers would never, by any chance, go
by the Railroad. The occasional traveller, who went the same route for