keep his figures for speed within the most moderate limits so as
not to prejudice the company's case, but his belief in his own
invention mastered his restraint, though as he afterward said, he
did his best "to keep the engine down to ten miles an hour." In
fact, his daring prediction of twelve miles per hour struck the
learned counsel with horror. They objected that horses would fly
in terror from such a monster. He replied that horses had been
known to shy at wheelbarrows. They tried to make him admit that
the wheels would slip on the smooth rails, but he knew that they
would bite without teeth. One of the committee said, "Suppose
that a cow were to stray upon the line and get in the way of the
engine; would not that be a very awkward circumstance?" To which
the countryman had a ready reply, "Very awkward--for the cow!"
The opposition, which was largely animated by the existing canal
interest, ventured some views which the experience of the next
five years was to make most ridiculous. They declared that the
plan to carry the rails over the surveyed route across Chat Moss,
a wide morass, was impossible; and furthermore, that no
locomotive could make headway against the high winds which at
times prevailed in that region. Experts were brought to testify
that "no engineer in his senses would go through Chat Moss if he
wanted to make a railroad from Liverpool to Manchester." "In my
judgment," said one of them, "a railroad cannot be made over Chat
Moss without going to the bottom." The committee decided against
the bill, but at the next session Parliament granted the company
the power to construct the road, the question whether or not
locomotives should be used upon it being left in abeyance. George
Stephenson was chosen to be chief engineer, at one thousand
pounds a year.