256 ABDICATION OF CHARLES X.-DUKE OF ORLEANS KING. [1830. On the 2nd of August he addressed a letter to the duke of Orleans, inclosing a formal act of abdication in favour of his grandson the duke of Bordeaux. Remaining at Rambouillet with numerous soldiers around him, the provisional government began to be uneasy as to the possibility of another conflict. Three commissioners were sent to confer with Charles and to urge him to depart. Their recommendations were backed by the presence of six thousand of the National Guard, who marched to Rambouillet, accompanied by vast numbers of Parisians on foot and in vehicles of every description. The king consented to leave, and to proceed to Cherbourg, escorted by the Garde-duCorps. Throughout his journey the unfortunate king and his family received no indignities from the people, but they saw on every steeple the tri-coloured flag, and the tri-coloured cockade in many a hat. They embarked for England on the 16th, and were carried to the coast of Devonshire, the king having decided that England should be his place of refuge. For a short time he resided at Lulworth Castle. He subsequently occupied Holyrood House. Some ultra-liberals in Edinburgh having shown an inclination to treat the fallen monarch with disrespect upon his arrival, sir Walter Scott published a manly and touching appeal to the more honourable feelings of his fellowcitizens." If there can be any who retain angry or invidious recollections of late events in France, they ought to remark that the ex-monarch has, by his abdication, renounced the conflict into which, perhaps, he was engaged by bad advisers; that he can no longer be the object of resentment to the brave, but remains to all the most striking emblem of the mutability of human affairs which our mutable times have afforded." * On the 3rd of August the duke of Orleans opened the legislative session in the Chamber of Deputies. In that Chamber during the next four days. there was a partial opposition from the adherents of the fallen dynasty against the manifest tendency to a solution of the difficult question of a future government by the appointment of the duke of Orleans as king. The Charter of Louis XVIII. received some alterations, and then it was declared by a large majority, that, subject to the acceptance of the modified Charter, the universal and urgent interests of the French nation called to the throne the duke of Orleans. On the 9th of August the duke of Orleans in the Chamber of Deputies declared his acceptance of the Crown, with the title King of the French, and took this oath: "In the presence of God, I swear to observe faithfully the constitutional charter, with the modifications expressed in the declaration; to govern only by the laws and according to the laws; to cause good and true justice to be rendered to each according to his right; and to act in all things only with a view to the interest, the happiness, and the glory of the French people." "While two American packets, escorted by two French men-of-war, rapidly conveyed the old king and his family from France, all France hastened to Paris." An English historian may add that no inconsiderable portion of Lockhart's "Life of Scott," vol. vii. p. 226. + Guizot, vol. ii. p. 36. 1830.] THE BELGIAN REVOLUTION. 257 the population of this kingdom were, as he himself witnessed, looking with intense interest upon the localities of the great events of the three days. Some were fraternizing with National Guards in the cafés; others were mingling in a crowd of all nations at the evening réceptions of general La Fayette; a privileged few were banqueting at some shady guinguette with a great company of French, English, Belgian, and Polish liberals, whose fervid. eloquence seemed the prelude to a very unsettled future of European Society. There was, however, so much to admire in the conduct of the French people, that although the traces of carnage were everywhere around-although men of education joined their voices in the common cry of "death to the ministers," as an atonement for the blood of the slain whose graves were daily strewn with immortelles,-the old idea of revolution had lost something of its terrors. There had been more bold speaking at our elections for the new Parliament than was considered in some quarters safe or decorous. Yet the sympathy of the British population with the revolution of France was not to be mistaken for an approbation of levelling and destructive doctrines, such as had led astray many enthusiasts amongst us in 1789. It was "a contrast to the first revolution;" it "vindicated the cause of knowledge and liberty, showing how humanizing to all classes of society are the spread of thought and information, and improved political institutions."* The sympathy was too manifest to be set at nought by the government of this country, even if it had been as much disposed to uphold "a royal rebellion against society," as it was the fashion unjustly to ascribe to the great warrior who was the head of the Cabinet. He, it has been stated, was for a short time perplexed and undecided. "When nothing was known beyond the ordinances of July, some one asked the duke of Wellington, What are we to think of this ?' 'It is a new dynasty,' answered the duke. 'And what course shall you take ?' inquired his friend. First, a long silence, and then we will concert with our allies what we shall say."" A wiser and nobler policy than "a long silence and "concert with our allies," was speedily adopted. When the new parliament was opened on the 2nd of November, "the ready manner in which ministers recognized the new government of France" was cordially approved by earl Grey. 6 The Revolution of France necessarily produced a great effect upon the popular feeling throughout Europe, and especially in the kingdom of the Netherlands. Since the settlement of Europe in 1815, when the Congress of Vienna decided that Belgium and Liège, together with the Seven United Provinces, should be formed into one kingdom, there had been constant dissensions between the Belgian and Dutch subjects of William Frederick I. The union with Holland had imparted an extraordinary impulse to the commerce and manufactures of Belgium, but this material prosperity could not blend the two peoples into one nation. The differences of religion and of language, and the inequality upon several financial matters of the northern and southern kingdoms, kept up the acrimony which was exhibited, not only in the public journals, but in the debates of the States-General. In April, 1830, Messrs. Potter, Tielmans, Bartells, and others, were tried at Brussels VOL. VIII. * Dr. Arnold, August, 1830. "Life," vol. i. p. 264. 8 258 THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY. [1830. on a charge of conspiracy against the government of the Netherlands. The three named were found guilty, and sentenced to be banished. Potter was in Paris during the Revolution of July, the events of which period were not calculated to moderate his revolutionary zeal. He was an active agent in promoting the rising of the populace in Brussels on the 25th of August. In a second insurrection, of September, the Dutch troops were compelled to retreat before the armed insurgents. The contest went on in various sanguinary conflicts, until the five great Powers imposed a cessation of arms on both nations and recognized the independence of Belgium by a protocol of the 4th of November. The autumn of 1830 witnessed in England the most remarkable contrast between the triumphs of intellect and the disgraces of ignorance. On the 15th of September the first Railway for the conveyance of passengers was opened, the carriages being drawn by a locomotive engine, at the speed of a racehorse. Immediately after the harvest the Southern Agricultural Counties. were given over to more havoc and alarm than had ever attended the operations of the frame-breaking general Ludd. There was a war of the labourer against the farmer, in the shape of incendiary fires of barns and corn-stacks, and the destruction of threshing-machines and other implements of industry beyond the commonest tool. Before we proceed to trace the course of the universal political excitement of the next two years, let us rapidly view the rise of the new power of Communication which was destined to produce results beyond all possible conception in the progress of civilized communities. The simultaneous manifestation of the belief of large bodies of labourers, that their condition would be bettered by driving back society to the commonest inventive arts of savage tribes, and to the barbaric ignorance which, in destroying capital, would make all poorer, may be more fitly treated of in a subsequent view of the condition of the labourers in husbandry, when incendiary fires and the destruction of machinery were traced to causes of no temporary nature. On the 2nd of March, 1825, there was a debate in the House of Commons on the motion for the second reading of the Bill for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The subscribers to this undertaking were the bankers, merchants, traders, and manufacturers of Liverpool and Manchester. They had not engaged in this project with a view to individual profit as shareholders, for it had been agreed that no person should hold more than ten shares, and they would be satisfied if they received ten per cent., or even five per cent. upon their investment. Their great object was the increase of commerce. It was alleged that no such encouragement was necessary; for there were two or three canals, which were sufficient for every purpose of commerce in the districts through which the railway was to pass. The answer was, that under the existing system cotton had been detained at Liverpool for a fortnight, whilst the manufacturers of Manchester were obliged to suspend their labours, and goods manufactured at Manchester could not be transmitted to Liverpool in time for shipment, on account of the tardy canal conveyance. Then came the rejoinder. The experiment of conveying goods on a railway had been tried, and had completely failed. The best locomotive engine that could be found had been selected; and the average rate on a plane surface was not three miles and three-quarters per 1830.] THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE. 259 hour, which was slower than canal conveyance.* Before a Committee upon the Bill, Telford and others expressed an opinion that with the improvement of the locomotive the speed upon a railway might be fifteen miles, and even twenty miles an hour. These opinions were called "the gross exaggerations of the powers of the locomotive steam-engine;" and it was contended that even if such a speed could be attained, the dangers of bursting boilers and broken wheels would be so great, that we should as soon expect that "people would suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate." In the same article from which we quote, the general question of railways is thus summarily disposed of: "As to those persons who speculate on making railways general throughout the kingdom, and superseding all the canals, all the waggons, mail and stage-coaches, post-chaises, and, in short, every other mode of conveyance by land and by water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of notice."+ The Bill for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway passed, in spite of the most strenuous opposition from canal companies, and from proprietors of land through or near which the line was intended to run. For four years the works went on. Difficulties were overcome which then appeared insuperable, but which would be deemed trifles in the great engineering operations of a later period of railway speculation. Nevertheless, satisfactory as was this progress, no one believed that a passenger traffic would arise that would dispense in any considerable degree with mails and stage coaches. Railways were not a new invention; nor were locomotive engines. Tramroads were used in collieries; and the construction of a steam-engine that would move forward with a weight behind it had been attempted by various projectors. But the tramways were laid on yielding beds, and out of level; and the engines would either not go at all or very soon come to a stand. The alliance of the railway and the locomotive was still far distant. In 1813 there was a superintendent engineer of a colliery at Killingworth, who had gradually risen from the humble position of an engine-fireman to be worthy of an employ which placed him above the condition of a labourer. This selftaught man was George Stephenson. His mind was ever active. He had constructed an incline and an apparatus by which waggons descending from the coal-pit to the loading-place were made to draw up the empty waggons. At the time when Davy had invented his safety-lamp, Stephenson had constructed a similar lamp, without any knowledge of the contemporary invention, and this lamp is still in use in the pit at Killingworth. In 1814 he had constructed a locomotive engine for the colliery in which he was engaged. It was a success, drawing eight loaded waggons along the tramway at the rate of four miles an hour. He then declared that there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, if the works could be made to stand it. During the next ten years his skill and perseverance raised him into employment as the engineer of railways connected with colliery properties. A more important undertaking was the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, on which an engine was employed which drew a * Hansard, 2nd series, vol. xii. cols. 845 to 854. + "Quarterly Review,” vol. xxxi. p. 361. 260 GEORGE AND ROBERT STEPHENSON. [1830. load of ninety tons, at the rate of eight miles an hour. In 1824 he surveyed the line for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and superintended that work till the line was opened in 1830. Great were the objections of engineers to locomotives being employed on this line; but, with the true confidence of genius, George Stephenson persevered in working out, with the aid of his son Robert, the plans of an engine which would produce results undreamt of by the most sanguine believers in the wonders to be effected by the appliances. of science to the industrial arts. He persuaded the directors of the railway to offer a prize for the best locomotive. The Rocket engine constructed by him won the prize. The old modes of transit were from the hour of that experiment changed throughout the whole civilized world. Burke has described in glowing imagery the beneficent angel of a noble house unfolding to lord Bathurst, in the reign of Anne, the commercial grandeur of his country; but pointing to America, a little speck, a seminal principle, then scarcely visible in the national interests, which, seventy years afterwards, should give to England a commerce equal to the whole of that which the young man saw at the beginning of the century. We may imagine the angel of the humble house of Stephenson showing to the father and the son, intensely meditating over their models and their plans, what would be the effect of their projects upon themselves and upon the world. To the father he might have said-you shall not only construct mighty works yourself, but be the precursor of a great race of engineers who will cover England, Scotland, and Ireland with a web of railways, bringing districts once inaccessible to commercial interchange into easy communication, equalizing prices throughout the land, cutting tunnels through the adamantine rock, carrying bridges over great rivers. You were the first that should realize the dream of the poet's "Car of Miracle," "Steady and swift the self-moved chariot went."* Before ye both shall "taste of death," the one in the fullness of years, the other too soon called away from his appointed task-the whistle of the Locomotive shall have been heard upon the continent of Europe, from the Garonne to the Danube. France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, shall have welcomed the sound; Russia shall not have forbidden its approach. shall have penetrated the densest forests of North America; its jubilant voice shall tell that a railway has connected the coasts of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Wherever England has colonized there shall have come this sound, the herald of the never-resting spread of her arts, her laws, and her language. To the son the angel might have foretold, it shall be yours to connect Birmingham with London, as your father connected Liverpool with Manchester; you shall carry the ponderous train over the broad Tyne at Newcastle, and, more daring, over the Menai Strait, by a tubular bridge that shall be a wonder of the world; you shall complete the railway communication between West Canada and the United States without interruption by the waters of the St. Lawrence; you shall unite Alexandria with Cairo, to perfect the overland route to India, by works as grand and far more useful than the Pyramids, and “ 'forty centuries shall look down upon |