ffiottgc of gomntong. 
 
 SELECT COMMITTEE 
 
 LONDON AND YORK RAILWAY BILL. 
 
 ‘. (GROUP X.) ' " " ' 
 
 TUESDAY, 29th APRIL, 1845. 
 
 LORD COURTENAY in the Chair. 
 
 Mr. Serjeaxt Wraxgiiaai. —I believe it now becomes my duty, 
 my Lord, on behalf of the promoters of the London and York 
 Bill,—to which you have been good enough to concede the 
 priority,—to state to the Committee the circumstances under 
 which, as they humbly conceive, they have a just and righteous 
 claim upon the assent of the Legislature to the passing of this 
 Bill. And, my Lord, I am quite sure that it would be mere 
 superfluity of language on my part if, at this the outset of a pro¬ 
 ceeding which I fear (for the sake of the Committee) must neces¬ 
 sarily tie no short one, I were to bespeak the most earnest 
 and anxious attention of the Committee, not to the statement 
 which I shall have the honour of submitting to them, so much 
 as to the evidence by which that statement will be supported. 
 I, on my part, my Lord, will promise in making that statement 
 to restrict myself within 1 the narrowest limits compatible with 
 the great interests committed to my charge. And I hope I may 
 claim credit for the promise which I am making, when the Com- ' 
 mittee consider the many circumstances which would induce me 
 as much as possible to abridge my observations. 
 
 My Lord, the matter which the Committee have to determine 
 is no light matter. It concerns the pecuniary interests of a vast 
 number of individuals, but-it affects what, I am well aware, will 
 be a still greater consideration with the Committee, it affects 
 also the interests of a very large portion of the population of 
 the country, for whose convenience and accommodation in a 
 matter of the utmost importance—the conveyance of themselves 
 and then- traffic—the scheme I have to open is propounded; 
 and I am quite sure, therefore, that honourable members, sitting 
 here as a Committee from one of the Houses of the Legislature, 
 
2 
 
 will pay to it their most careful and their most impartial 
 attention. 
 
 My Lord, the Committee are about to deal with a matter 
 in which many hundred miles of Railway are on one side or the 
 other concerned, in which many millions of property are at 
 stake, and in which the interests of the inhabitants of a very 
 large portion of the country are deeply and most anxiously con¬ 
 cerned. The question before the Committee, properly con¬ 
 sidered, is, I apprehend, the best mode of constructing a new 
 trunk line of Railway, between (as the termini) London and 
 York. A trunk Railway, which shall be so laid out, as not 
 only to convey the through traffic from one extremity of it to 
 the other, but to provide for the local wants and the convenience 
 of a large district lying between those two extreme points. 
 
 It is, in this advanced age of Railway science and of Railway 
 development, a matter of surprise that this should not have been 
 earlier accomplished; and, indeed, many years ago, I believe, 
 a project was entertained for making a trunk line somewhat in 
 the same direction, under the conviction, prevailing from the 
 commencement of the Railway system, that the existing line 
 through the centre of the country, by Derby and the Midland 
 Railways, connected with the London and Bifluingham at Rugby, 
 was one altogether inadequate to the wants of the country, 
 even considered as a trunk line between London and the North; 
 but which could not of course even pretend to accommodate 
 
 I the local traffic (a point of much higher importance, as the Com¬ 
 mittee will presently see, than the through traffic) of the district 
 through which this Railway is proposed to be carried. 
 
 It was, however, at that time considered, that there was 
 little chance of any Railway being productive to its projectors 
 which traversed a district exclusively agricultural. The impres¬ 
 sion then prevailing undoubtedly was (if we may collect it from 
 the course which was then taken with respect to the construc¬ 
 tion of Railways), that those Railways only could pay, which 
 relied exclusively on passenger traffic for their support, and 
 (almost as a necessary corollary to that proposition) which tra¬ 
 versed a manufacturing and (so to say) locomotive population. 
 Experience has, however, taught us, that both those propositions 
 I require great modification: and that it may fairly be said, that 
 j of no class of Railways are the pecuniary prospects more pro- 
 | mising, than of those which derive a considerable portion of their 
 j income from the carriage not merely of manufactured goods, but 
 j also of agricultural produce, from the place where that produce 
 { is grown to the markets where it is to be consumed. 
 
 Early last year a scheme was resumed of connecting the 
 North with the South by an additional and more direct trunk 
 Railway, which should pass through the agricultural districts, 
 especially the county of Lincoln. This scheme was, after consul¬ 
 tation with every town and district concerned, carefully ma- 
 
 y 
 
 x c ~ :; V /&' V 7 \ 
 
tured, and finally assumed the shape in which it now stands 
 before the Committee. 
 
 I should be wasting your Lordship’s time and exhausting my 
 own strength if I were to enter into any narrative of the steps 
 which were taken, and the different projects which made then- 
 appearance, and were either modified or dismissed, till at last 
 the matured plan was determined upon. Suffice it to say, that 
 after long deliberation, and frequent communication with all 
 parties whose interests are bound up in the best line being 
 selected, the promoters of this measure are here to submit to 
 the Committee’s approbation the fine which appears upon the 
 map before you. That line commences at the metropolis, at 
 King’s Cross, a point probably known to every member of the 
 Committee; and travels as nearly as possible in the line of the 
 old North Road, through Barnet, Hatfield, Stevenage, Hitchin, 
 Biggleswade, St. Neots, and Huntingdon, and at length reaches 
 the point at which, for a moment, I, with your Lordship’s per¬ 
 mission, will make a halt—the city of Peterborough. There¬ 
 abouts the main divides itself into two trunks; one of which 
 passes to the right, through the towns of Spalding, Boston, Lin¬ 
 coln, and Gainsborough, till it rejoins the other trunk line, which 
 had adhered to the original North Koad through Stamford, 
 Grantham, Newark, and Retford, at the town of Bawtry. The 
 trunk then, after throwing off a Branch from Ban-try to Sheffield, 
 passes on to Doncaster; and thence, by a direct line through 
 Selb}', joins the Great North of England Kailway in the imme¬ 
 diate vicinity of York. Another Branch leaves the line at Don¬ 
 caster and passes from that town to Wakefield. The whole 
 length of the lines is 327 miles. The main line from London to 
 York being 1854 miles. The other main line, which has been 
 called (and not inaptly) the Loop, from Peterborough to Bawtry, 
 is SG miles. The Wakefield Branch 19 miles. The Sheffield 
 Branch 21 miles. The Stamford Branch 4-1 miles, and a Branch 
 to Bedford 74 miles. Then there are sundry little off-sets from 
 the main line which do not deserve the name of Branches—better 
 known by the technical term of spurs—which, in the aggregate, 
 for the purpose of forming Junctions and giving accommodation 
 of various kinds on the line, are about 41 miles, making alto¬ 
 gether the number, that I have already given the Committee, of 
 327 miles. 
 
 As a trunk line, I ndec 1 r.jt point out to the Committee that 
 it would accommodate a great portion of the North of England 
 and of Scotland. I do not, however, enter into the population 
 or the particulars connected with those districts; because I am 
 anxious to confine myself within the narrowest possible limits, 
 and to devote such observations as I have to offer to the Com¬ 
 mittee, to the district more immediately traversed by the line 
 itself. The position of the line, at its commencement in the 
 metropolis, will, if the Committee cast then- eyes upon the map, 
 
4 
 
 be seen to occupy an intermediate space between the Northern 
 and Eastern Railways on the one hand, and the London and 
 Birmingham and Midland. Lines on the other. Measuring then 
 from an imaginary line midway between the London and York 
 and the London and Birmingham and Midland Railways oil the 
 one hand, and the Northern and Eastern on the other; and, 
 where that line terminates, the coast on the. east ; taking an 
 imaginary line in that way, parallel with the direction of the 
 London and York Railway, and midway towards, the existing 
 means of communication, it will be found that a space of nearly 
 4500 square miles, 2,840,000 acres—much of it the most produc¬ 
 tive perhaps in the kingdom,—and a population of 730,000 per¬ 
 sons, are comprised within the district so limited, aird so traversed. 
 
 I have already stated to the , Committee, that that population 
 is exclusively agricultural. It is a district,rich m all the produce 
 of the surface of the earth; and, though riot destitute of mine¬ 
 rals altogether, yet in no part possessing coal—the most impor¬ 
 tant of minerals. It is at, present singularly deficient in the 
 means of conveyance and communication,. Railways it has none: 
 water communications, always inconvenient and uncertain, are 
 not frequent; and those which exist are rather.in a lateral—an 
 eastern and western—direction, than a northern and southern. 
 A great part of the southern portion of the district (to which I 
 shall have occasion to allude more particularly bye and bye,) is 
 destitute of rvater communication altogether; and dependent, 
 for the transport of its . produce, and for the receipt of all that 
 it requires in return, upon the waggons and the turnpike roads. 
 It will immediately occur to the Committee, that what is re¬ 
 quired by. the district so circumstanced is, on the one hand, the 
 readiest access—by which I mean the shortest and cheapest 
 access—to those markets at which their produce cau be sold for 
 consumption; and, on the other hand, the readiest and cheapest 
 access to those mineral fields, and to those manufacturing dis¬ 
 tricts, -where the articles required by. the inhabitants of the dis¬ 
 trict are produced in the greatest quantity, and obtained with 
 the greatest facility. The great object therefore, to, which they, 
 —and, of course, those who are to lay clown a Railway for., their 
 accommodation,—have to look, is to obtain an access, on, the one 
 hand, to the metropolis, the great market of all; and on the 
 other hand, to the northern markets of the manufacturing popu¬ 
 lation of West Yorkshire, and of Lancashire, who want that food 
 which the eastern portion of the island alone produces; and who, 
 in return, can supply to those counties that in which the North 
 abounds, and in which the East is singularly, deficient, namely, 
 manufactured articles, and, before all and above all, coal—that 
 (next to food) greatest of the necessaries of life, especially to 
 the poor of the ,district, who are now almost precluded from 
 using it by the necessarily, exorbitant, price which its conveyance 
 costs. • ’ 
 
5 
 
 : Now, my Lord, I think I inay venture to challenge the ex¬ 
 amination of the map, at the hands even of those who are our 
 keenest (though I hope there are none here who can be called 
 our bitter)' adversaries, and ask, whether a glance at the map, and 
 at the line as laid down upon it, is not sufficient to satisfy any 
 one willing to be satisfied, or who is not resolutely bent against 
 admitting conviction to his mind, that the Railway, of which I am 
 now the advocate, does most satisfactorily and most completely 
 answer the two objects which I have ventured to state to the 
 Committee must be mainly kept in view; namely, a direct com¬ 
 munication for every part of that district with the metropolis, 
 and also a ready and direct communication with every portion 
 of the manufacturing districts of the North of England? 
 
 Not only so, my Lord, but by our connexion with the Great 
 North of Englahd Railway, in the neighbourhood of York, we 
 are brought into immediate communication with the great coal 
 fields of South Durham, and that district w hich produces coal in 
 the greatest perfection. Thus by the Great North of England 
 w'e shall receive the South Durham coal, and by the Wakefield 
 and the Sheffield Branches the coal of West Yorkshire—the Silk- 
 stone coal. The coal of the whole of those large coal fields will 
 be all brought together on the main fine down as far as Bawtry, 
 and thence distributed by the two trunk lines there diverging ; 
 and as they traverse the country southward, passing through 
 every town of importance which lies within the district; thus 
 supplying every market where the population would resort for the 
 purpose of purchasing either manufactured goods or coal, and 
 supplying them in the most direct manner. 
 
 So, again, south of Peterborough, south of the Loop, they 
 convey those different articles of goods—and especially coal, the 
 benefits of which it would be difficult for any one even to calcu¬ 
 late with any degree of precision—through Huntingdonshire and 
 the Southern counties; where the price at present paid for coal 
 is so ruinously high,’ that, as must be well known to many 
 honourable members, the population are obliged to resort to 
 other descriptions of fuel—wood and turf—because they are 
 unable to purchase it. 
 
 I have already described to the Committee the general 
 nature of the agricultural produce of the districts. The ordi¬ 
 nary agricultural produce is corn—whether as the raw material or 
 in its partly manufactured state of flour and malt— cattle, potatoes, 
 and in one part of the district especially, garden produce. These 
 form the principal items of the export trade of the district. The 
 utmost care has been employed in ascertaining the amount of 
 that portion of the produce of the district which now requires, 
 and which would avail itself of, the means of access to the 
 markets to the North and South; which this Railway, when con¬ 
 structed, will afford. I shall have to state to the Committee 
 sums so large as perhaps at the moment of stating them almost to 
 
6 
 
 startle and to excite the incredulity of those who hear me. I 
 can truly say that, when they first reached my own knowledge, 
 they greatly surprised one so inexperienced in such matters as 
 myself. But we are in a condition to prove all that I am now 
 about to state ; and I must entreat of the Committee, therefore, to 
 receive my statement as subject to the evidence we shall furnish; 
 and after the Committee have heard that evidence, I trust I shall 
 be in a condition to claim at their hands implicit credit for the 
 facts I am about to lay before them. The amount of agri¬ 
 cultural produce of the various kinds I have stated which are 
 raised within the district which I have already described, and are 
 thence exported, is, in round numbers, dismissing fractional sums, 
 about 6,500,0001. 
 
 Chairman.— Raised do you mean within the district? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangilvm. —The produce which they actually 
 export. 
 
 Chairman. —Send to market? 
 
 Mr. Darby. —From the district? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham.— Yes, besides what they consume 
 at home. The markets for that are almost exclusively, I believe, 
 London, and the manufacturing districts of West Yorkshire and 
 Lancashire. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall.— Is this calculation made at the present 
 prices? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham.— I do not know how far it is likely 
 to be influenced by any operation of the Tariff or the Sliding 
 Scale. 
 
 I have already stated to the Committee that the mode of 
 access to the markets is most circuitous. They have no direct 
 canals north or south. Such as they have, are almost all either 
 eastern or western, and of course extremely circuitous in their 
 course to their markets. 
 
 Such is the account of their exports. I shall be in a con¬ 
 dition also to lay before the Committee evidence of the amount 
 of their imports, in those articles which they consume, and 
 which of course comprise almost everything except agricultural 
 produce, in which they are rich. First and foremost is the article 
 of coal, with which they are supplied principally by communica¬ 
 tion with the sea, obtaining it from Yorkshire, Durham, and New¬ 
 castle. That applies to the greater portion of the northern part 
 of this district. At the extreme south they receive it through 
 London. . Having been brought by sea from the North, they 
 receive it from London; and a great portion of it by land 
 carriage only. Their lean stock, for this is a feeding district, 
 they have from Yorkshire and from Scotland. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —Where do you mean that they receive coals 
 from London? 
 
 Mr. Wrangham. —In the southern- part of the district. For 
 instance all the towns within twenty-five miles from London are 
 
supplied from London alone. Their oil cake, and the different 
 manures that they import, they get principally from Hull and 
 from London—north and south again. The foreign timber that 
 they want they have also from Hull through Gainsborough, or 
 Boston, or Wisbeach, or Lynn. Their manufactured goods of 
 course from the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire and Lan¬ 
 cashire; and the different exciseable articles which they require 
 they also obtain from the two ports I have mentioned, Hull 
 and London—north and south still. So that, as the Committee 
 will see, the whole course of then- traffic, both of export and 
 of import, points in those two directions, to the north and to 
 the south. 
 
 The amount of the imports of those various articles I have 
 named, I shall be in a condition to satisfy the Committee are, in 
 money, about 4,300,0001. a year; making a total of exports and im¬ 
 ports—a traflic for which they require conveyance, of 10,800,0001. 
 I have stated to the Committee generally, and I do not propose 
 to go into detail, which will be much better done by those more 
 competent to deal with it, that the general channels of conveyance 
 are those water communications; uncertain, inconvenient, and 
 circuitous. The present cost of conveyance has been ascertained 
 with the utmost accuracy, and I shall be (unless I am much 
 mistaken) in a condition to prove to the Committee that the 
 cost—to say nothing of the delay and length of time in gaining 
 their markets—the present cost of conveyance for their exports 
 is no less than, in round numbers, 440,0001. a year, and of their 
 imports 720,0001., making a total of about 1,160,0001. a year: 
 an enormous charge, even in money amount, to be borne by 
 such a district. 
 
 How, my Lord, I will state what we propose to do for the 
 district, in the way of relieving them from this or a large portion 
 of this immense annual charge. At Railway prices, the charge 
 for the conveyance of these exports -which now cost 440,0001. 
 a year, will be reduced (o 180,0001.: and the cost of those imports, 
 winch is at present 720,0001., will be reduced to less than one- 
 lialf, or about 350,0001. The Committee, of course, will under¬ 
 stand me as dealing with round numbers and not considering an 
 odd two or three thousand pounds in either calculation. These 
 two sums, added together, will make an amount of 530,0001. a 
 year, to be compared with 1,160,0001., the cost which they at 
 present pay. The Railway charge being 530,0001. is on the pre¬ 
 sent charge a diminution of 630,0001., or considerably more than 
 one-half. 
 
 But this applies only to what is chargeable, in Railway 
 phraseology, on the carriage of goods. We have still the 
 passengers to deal with; and there, my Lord, the saving 
 will be found to be not less in proportion. The present cost 
 of the conveyance of passengers in this district, taking the 
 average coach fare as the measure, will amoimt to 435,0001. 
 a year. The Railway fare for the same number of passengers, 
 
passing the same number'of miles, will be only 185,000?,, making 
 a total saving to the country, on the head of passengers, of 
 250,000?., or four-sevenths of the present cost. 
 
 Mb. Baring Wall. —In that calculation you take in all the 
 bye roads, or only the main roads? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Whaxgilgi.—I understand that it is only upon 
 the main roads the calculation has been made. 
 
 Now then, my Lord, adding the saving upon passengers of 
 250,000?. to the saving upon the goods of 630,000?., yoiv have 
 the total annual saving in the article of conveyance alone of 
 880,000?. a year; and that a saving which, being deducted from 
 1,595,000?., the present charge for passengers and goods, reduces 
 it from 1,595,000?. to 115,000?,, a saving of considerably more 
 
 • than one-half; and a saving which apportioned in money would 
 i amount to 24s. or 25s. a head upon the whole population of the 
 
 district; men, women, and children, old and young, rich and 
 poor, taking all together, there would be a saving of 24s. or 25s. 
 
 • per head by this saving in the article of conveyance alone; so 
 ■ enormous are the benefits to be conferred by giving to this agri- 
 \ culturally rich district the advantage of an immediate, direct, 
 
 and cheap communication. 
 
 I fear, my Lord, I should be delaying the Committee too 
 long to go through the whole of the different heads of advan¬ 
 tage, quite independent of the mere pecuniary saving in the 
 amount of the present rates of conveyance. But one or two I 
 shall be forgiven for referring to. This district, as an agricul¬ 
 tural district, must be one most in need of those foreign manures 
 which are now creating abundance through many parts of the 
 country hitherto not so productive. They will receive, in this 
 way, at a very cheap rate, those foreign manures which at present 
 they cannot obtain. But they will receive also, wliat at present 
 they are excluded from, the stable manure, both of London 
 and the different great towns upon the route; which we propose 
 d to carry at a very reduced price, indeed at Id. per ton per 
 ji mile, as back carriage in the w aggons which have’brought coal 
 from the north to the southern parts of the district; so that the 
 waggons which leave coal at a town, or at the town in which I 
 am now addressing the Committee, will come back freighted with 
 that manure, much w ; anted in the district, and in some parts of 
 it indispensable. Not only foreign manures, however, but lime, 
 the most essential perhaps, and the most generally useful of all 
 manures, is at present scarce hi this district; 1 not that there is 
 no limestone, far from it; there is limestone, although in the 
 Report of the Board of Trade they state there is none. There 
 is limestone in the district, but they have' not the means of 
 burning it. It is not the limestone that is -wanting, but the coal. 
 
 Chairman.— Where is the limestone ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant W ranghasl-— -In Lincolnshire, in the neighbour¬ 
 hood of Peterborough, north and south of Peterborough, there 
 are districts of from forty to fifty miles traversed by the line, 
 
where there is abundance of limestone, but no coal. And if there 
 were coal, there are no means at present existing for conveying 
 the lime over other portions of the district. Now the Railway 
 will both bring the coal and take away the lime, and thus confer 
 a double benefit, both on the district where the lime lies and upon 
 the district where it is not butis much needed.. The Knottingley 
 lime field, which may be known to some honourable members, 
 lies in the immediate neighbourhood of the line, within tliree 
 miles of it, and within an excellent water communication; so that 
 the district will have the option of either importing lime ready 
 made from Knottingley or importing coal for the manufacture of 
 lime. 
 
 C iiAHtiux.—Wh ere is Knottingley ? 
 
 kin. Serjeant Wranghaii. —It is in the North, close to Ferry¬ 
 bridge, between Leeds and Selby. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —Can you refer us to the passage in the 
 Report which states that there is no limestone in the district ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiail— They say there is no coal, lime¬ 
 stone, nor building stone. It is in page 4. They say the whole 
 district is destitute of coal, lime, and building stone. As to coal 
 they are perfectly right, but as to the other two they are in error. 
 The mistake as to stone is a singular one for the Board to have 
 fallen into, inasmuch as the stone of -which the Houses of Parlia¬ 
 ment are now building, and the working of which now sounds in 
 our ears, crosses the line at Retford. There are also quarries near 
 Stamford, and the Ancaster stone also of a quality not inferior. 
 I hope the Committee will not understand me as throwing any 
 reflection upon the Board of Trade. For the misstatement is 
 one they are very likely to have fallen into, with the necessarily 
 deficient means of information which the Board possesses. They 
 have not had the opportunity of sifting this matter as a Com¬ 
 mittee of the House of Commons can do. It may be hazardous 
 to deal in calculations of this kind, but one may form some notion 
 of the benefit to be derived from lime to this agricultural dis¬ 
 trict.- If you take the acres of arable land at (which I believe 
 is under the truth) about 2,000,000, and if one-eighth part of 
 that is suited for lime each year, which is, I believe, what they 
 would desire to do; at two tons per acre, the quantity annually' 
 used would create a demand for 500,000 tons of lime per annum; 
 and I believe that will be a very moderate calculation indeed. 
 If you put the additional quantity of corn raised in consequence 
 of that lime, at an additional quarter per acre, you then have 
 250,000 additional quarters of wheat raised within the year; and 
 taking the benefit conferred at only 30s. per acre, you have in 
 that way an annual benefit, conferred upon the land of 375,0001. 
 
 The district, though producing generally the sort of crops to 
 which I have been referring, does, in one part of it, in the neigh¬ 
 bourhood of Biggleswade, possess a kind of produce peculiar to 
 itself, so far as the rest of the district is concerned, namely, 
 
10 
 
 garden produce. I shall have to refer presently to that division 
 more particularly; I will only state, at present, that their market is 
 London and the North of England and manufacturing districts, and 
 that the annual amount of the produce in money is about 120,000k 
 If any honourable member has ever traversed the North Road, he 
 will remember that, when you come near Biggleswade, you have 
 the air tainted with onions: and those who are well acquainted 
 with that district, and with its capabilities, will tell the Com¬ 
 mittee, that, if the Railway be made, and an access opened 
 northward and southward, they have no doubt that the quantity 
 I have named at 120,000k would be, from the greater quantity 
 of land thrown into gardens, at least doubled. In other parts of 
 the district to which my observations refer, potatoes are an 
 article of considerable production. That is an article, which, 
 above all others, requires a cheap conveyance to its markets: 
 for it is a very cheap and low-priced article; this crop also 
 requires, more than any other, a cheap conveyance of manure; 
 for it is a most exhausting crop, as honourable members are well 
 aware. The potatoes are chiefly from about Spalding and 
 Boston, and along the course of the Witham and the Trent; 
 and their markets are the same with those for the other agri¬ 
 cultural produce of the district, the north-western manufacturing 
 districts and London; the two devouring mouths which swallow 
 the whole of this produce. 
 
 The quantity of coal to be conveyed into the district would 
 of course be measured by the amount. of population. We pro¬ 
 pose to bring it at so cheap a rate, of the best quality, and so 
 greatly to reduce the price, as to put it Within the reach of 
 even the poorer classes of inhabitants; and, I need not say, 
 entirely to supersede the inferior and dearer coal which is at 
 present consumed within the district, and to supersede also that 
 still more inferior substitute for coal, the turf and brushwood. 
 But honourable members will see that so far, particularly as the 
 coal is concerned, the benefit will not be confined to the district 
 of country belonging to the London and York system; but, by 
 the connection with the Railways running east and west from the 
 neighbourhood of Peterborough and Huntingdon, and the whole 
 of the Eastern Counties by Brandon and Ely, the Norwich and 
 Brandon, and the Norwich and Yarmouth Lines, and the lines now 
 in contemplation—coal would be conveyed over the whole of the 
 Eastern Counties district at a greatly cheaper rate than that at 
 which it can be at present procured. Now, my Lord, taking the 
 popidation of this Eastern Counties district (leaving the margin 
 of the coast to be otherwise supplied) at 545,000, and at the 
 allowance of only one ton per head, which is a very limited 
 allowance for the consumption of coal; there would be a saving 
 to the population of this district of 6s. 5d. per ton, upon the 
 average, in the conveyance of the coal, or 175,000k a year. 
 
 But, my Lord, whilst I am speaking of the saving in the article 
 
11 
 
 of coal, this amount sinks into insignificance when we come to 
 consider the benefit to be conferred upon the district in which 
 we are conducting this inquiry—London. I shall be hi a condi¬ 
 tion to show the Committee—and I make this statement at 
 whatever risk of exoiting opposition in quarters at present inte¬ 
 rested in the conveyance of that coal—that if they shall concede 
 to me the powers we ask, we shall he able to bring the Durham 
 coal, the best quality of North Country coal, (to say nothing of 
 introducing the Silkstone, the Yorkshire coal, of which, never¬ 
 theless, the parties may take then- choice, procuring which they 
 please,) we can bring coal to London from the North at a reduc¬ 
 tion in the present price of at least 4s. a ton; no trifling reduc¬ 
 tion, nor unimportant, when the Committee consider the vast 
 collection of poverty in the streets and alleys of this metropolis; 
 and when they consider that the consumption of coal in London 
 cannot be calculated at less than above two and a half million 
 tons per annum,—I ought not to use the phrase “ calculated,” 
 that is the official return of the quantity consumed, 2,600,000 
 tons,—3'ou have a saving in coal, to this metropolis alone, of 
 520,000?. a year. 
 
 Mit. Poulett Scrope. —Taking into your district Boston and 
 Spalding, and some other places, quite upon the coast, do you 
 mean that you can supply coal cheaper to them than they get it 
 from the sea? 
 
 Mb. Serjeant Whanghaji. —Yes, in the same way as we 
 supply London at a still greater distance. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —Six shillings and five-pence you say is the 
 average? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgiiam. —The Committee will understand 
 6-?. 5d. is the average applicable to the Eastern Counties, lying to 
 the east of our district, beyond our own district. The average in 
 the district itself, ranging of course from a greater reduction to a 
 lower one nearer the coal field, will involve a reduction in the 
 price of coal of between 8s. and 9s. a ton, and in the London 
 district 4s. a ton. When you come to look at the district within 
 twenty-five miles of London, to the northward, and consider the 
 enormous price they have to pay for land carriage from London, 
 in addition to the price we all pay for coal in London, the Com¬ 
 mittee will not be surprised to learn that the reduction in price 
 that we shall establish in. this division will be at least 15s. per 
 ton. I am sure I should be the last to complain if these large 
 sums should excite the surprise, and, even for a moment, the 
 hesitation, if not the incredulity, of those who hear me: but, at 
 the same time, I feel confidence that that hesitation will be 
 removed, and that incredulity converted into conviction, before 
 they shall have heard the close of the evidence in the case. 
 
 These benefits are not to be easily, or by any or every 
 arrangement of Railways, conferred. ■ They must depend, espe¬ 
 cially in the heavy mineral articles to which I referred, upon 
 
12 
 
 very, low rates of charge for carnage. Now, I take it, especially 
 in the article of coal, to which it may be as well, for the sake of 
 illustration, to .confine, the attention of the Committee at present, 
 that these very low rates , of carriage cannot, be hoped for. (be¬ 
 cause it would not answer the purposes of any Company, so to 
 reduce the price), except the whole of the line over which these 
 coals are to travel shall be the property of one independent 
 Company: because, rates of carriage, which may be profitable 
 to those who have to receive a mileage upon 150 or 200 miles, 
 woidd become utterly ruinous if that line were to be broken into 
 pieces, by the interpolation of first one Company, and then 
 another; with all the expenses of separate management, and 
 with the number of miles traversed so few as not to give, upon 
 the aggregate, a remunerating amount.. I venture therefore to 
 lay it down as an axiom, as to which there can be no doubt, and 
 on which there will be, I hope, but little question raised before 
 the Committee, that the lowest prices of conveyance can only be 
 secured by having the whole line under the control of one Com¬ 
 pany, possessing unity and therefore cheapness of management; 
 so that the charges for management may be spread oyer a vast 
 number of miles, and amount to a very trifle per mile, instead of 
 taking some seem different Companies, over whose hues in suc¬ 
 cession the articles traversing the district are to be conveyed; 
 eight Companies I believe according to the Board of Trade’s 
 suggestion. It is necessary, I say, for the purpose of conferring 
 this advantage of cheapness, that there should be one Company 
 alone, and that Company possessing an open access to the coal 
 fields from which the supply is to be derived,—without having 
 to pass upon the line of any other, perchance some rival Com¬ 
 pany, who woidd be enabled, by the obstacles it could throw in 
 the way, or by the impost which it could continue to lay upon 
 the traffic, to keep, as it were, the turnpike gate of our line, and 
 prevent our being able to convey the traffic, and especially the 
 mineral traffic, to the consumers at the low rates which ensure 
 the benefits I have ventured to describe. Now this unity of 
 management, and all the benefits resulting from it, w r e possess, 
 and we only possess. 
 
 Mr. Darby.—W hen do you get into the coal field from your 
 own line ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —By Branches to the West Biding 
 we come in immediate connection with, the West Riding coal 
 fields, and by our junction with the , Great North of England, we 
 come immediately into connection with the South Durham coal 
 field, that line being a line which now, conveys coal. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —You spoke of the necessity of bringing it. only 
 upon your line. I.understood you, it was necessary, in order to 
 carry out this cheapness, that it should proceed all the way upon 
 your own line. ,1 do not see how that is to. be ? ; 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam.—I have no doubt it is the imper- 
 
13 
 
 feetion of my mode of explaining the matter. From the point 
 where' this district commences, the whole'of the line traversing, 
 and conveying, and distributing the coal throughout it, should, I 
 say,' be in the hand's of one Company, and not in the hands of 
 eight' different and rival Companies with different interests, at 
 all events, incurring different and cumulative expenses, which 
 would swallow up the profit, and render it impossible for them to 
 carry at such low rates as we shall have the power to do. 
 
 In the West Riding of Yorkshire our lines run to the very 
 coal field, almost to the very pits where the mineral is to be 
 obtained. The honourable member will understand, that our 
 calculations, into the details of which, of course, I do not now 
 propose to go, are all taken, so far as the Durham coal is con¬ 
 cerned, from the present prices at the point from which our 
 Railway starts, having already paid the charge, such as it is, upon 
 the Great North of England Railway, and being liable only to 
 our additional fare. 
 
 My Lord, upon this point I am happy to have the sanction 
 of an authority, from whose decision, in other points, it will be 
 necessary for me to appeal. I am happy to have, for the general 
 principles I have ventured to state to the Committee, the sanc¬ 
 tion of the Report of the Board of Trade. I find, though not 
 in the case immediately under the consideration of the Com¬ 
 mittee, that they have laid down a principle, from which I 
 imagine few r can dissent, namely, “ That the traffic of a system 
 of tines, connected with one another, that is, connected under one 
 management, can always he worked more economically, under one 
 uniform management, than hy different Companies. The Com¬ 
 pany 1 which works the main lines, and possesses the prin¬ 
 cipal terminal stations, can run more frequent trains, and make 
 better arrangements for forwarding the traffic of the cross 
 lines, than it could afford to do if two or three separate esta¬ 
 blishments had to be maintained, and the harmony of arrange¬ 
 ments depended on two or three independent authorities. Under 
 such circumstances, a conflict of feeling and interest has, almost 
 invariably, grown up, from which the public has suffered the 
 most serious inconvenience. When the traffic is large, this con¬ 
 flict has frequently led, not only to increased inconvenience, but 
 to increased dafrger, and where the terminus, or a portion of the 
 rails of one Company, have been common to the other, these 
 results have been greatly aggravated.” In another place they 
 say, “Many important branches of traffic also are apt to be neglected, 
 which, can only be properly developed ivhere a long consecutive line 
 of Bailway is united in one common interest. Coals and heavy goods, 
 for instance, can be conveyed for long distances, with a profit, at rates 
 which 'ibould be altogether insufficient to remunerate a Company which 
 only Had a rim of ten or twenty miles. And thus many of the 
 most important benefits of Railways to the community at large, can 
 only be obtained by uniting throiigh lines in one interest:’ 
 
I shoilld almost apologize for reading those passages from the 
 Board Of Trade Reports; the first in the Kentish, and the second 
 on the Berwick Lines, if it Were hot that, being obliged to dissent 
 from many of the conclusions at which the Board have arrived, 
 I am happj r to have the opportunity of, at all events, marking 
 the points in which I have the good fortune to agree with 
 them. 
 
 Now, my Lord, the object I apprehend of any Railway which 
 is to traverse such a district as this, will be two-fold—first as a 
 great trunk line between the extreme points, and secondly as a 
 line accommodating intermediate districts. And I cannot better 
 describe what I believe to be the requisites in any line, which is 
 to accomplish the second object, as a line for local accommoda¬ 
 tion, (by far the most important point,) than by using the words 
 of the Board of Trade, who say in the fourth page of their 
 Report, upon this matter, “It is clear, therefore, that the hading 
 object is to connect the chief toicns, and principal markets for agri¬ 
 cultural produce, with one another, with London and the Bail- 
 ways leading to the manufacturing districts, and icith shipping 
 ports." As a trunk line there can be no question as to the 
 superiority to be attributed to that now under your consideration; 
 it is some nine or ten miles shorter than any other to York; it is 
 Upon the average 25 miles shorter than the present modes 
 of communicating between the metropolis and the West Riding 
 of York; it is 33i miles shorter than the present Railway route 
 between London and York; and the saving of distance between 
 London and the principal towns of Scotland, is even greater than 
 the figures I have just stated to the Committee. 
 
 Mr. Poulett Scrope. —You do not reckon the Direct Northern 
 at all ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgiiam. —That has curtailed itself of one- 
 lialf its line. The Direct Northern has lost that portion of its 
 identity which was distributed over the district between Lincoln 
 and London. There remain some symptoms of vitality in the 
 limb which is still before you between Lincoln and York. How 
 long the muscular action may continue which, even in expiring 
 bodies, testifies that life has been there, it is not for me, but it 
 null be for my learned friend and the Standing Orders Com¬ 
 mittee to determine. 
 
 Mr. Darby —How much shorter do you say it is than the 
 present Railway route ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrasgraw. — 33J miles shorter than the 
 Midland route from York to London—185J instead of 219. 
 And it is now (I venture to repeat, subject even to the resusci¬ 
 tation of my learned friend on my left) by nine or ten miles the 
 shortest line of all those which the Committee have before them. 
 Now nine miles is a considerable amount of distance; and though 
 it may be that the Board of Trade have treated it as of little 
 consequence when they are dealing with the distance between 
 
15 
 
 London and York, it is somewhat singular that at a later period 
 ; of then- Report, when they come to draw a parallel north of 
 Lincoln between the Direct Northern and the London and York, 
 the difference of eight miles grows, in then- opinion, to a most 
 ■ serious obstacle—a most serious objection, I should say rather, 
 to the London and York scheme, which is in that portion of its 
 course somewhat longer than the Direct Northern; and the 
 Board of Trade there consider that as a difference which ought 
 to be fatal to the London and York, as compared with its rival; 
 whereas, when dealing with the aggregate, and when the differ¬ 
 ence of nine miles between London and York is in favour of the 
 London and York, as compared with the line recommended by the 
 Board of Trade, that difference is treated as of not much im¬ 
 portance, nor much entitled to the consideration of the Board or 
 . the public. 
 
 So much for it as a trunk line. As a local line, what is it 
 that is required? The leading object is to connect the chief 
 towns, principal markets for agricultural produce, first of all with 
 one another. Will the Committee do me the favour to follow 
 the course of the London and York, and see how far it answers 
 that recommendation? Commencing in the neighbourhood of 
 Hatfield, it connects Hatfield, Hitcliin, Biggleswade, St. Neots, 
 Huntingdon, Peterborough; going along the old North Road, it 
 passes close by Stamford, through Grantham, Newark, East 
 Retford to Bawdry; diverging from Peterborough, and taking up 
 the Loop line, it connects Peterborough with Spalding and 
 Boston, and again with Lincoln, Gainsborough, and Bawdry; 
 then it proceeds to Doncaster, and so to Selby and York, diverg¬ 
 ing by branches into the West Riding. Surely, then, it cannot 
 be for a moment contended that it does not amply carry out the 
 first requisite of a local line for the accommodation of the 
 district. It connects the chief towns with one another. Does 
 it connect them with London? It follows as a corollary that if 
 connected with one another, by the trunk line passing through 
 them all, they are necessarily connected by that same trunk 
 line with London. Then as to the manufacturing districts, the 
 Committee see. that the Sheffield and Wakefield Branches carry 
 out that connection completely and directly, so that it w'ould 
 appear that the objects, which are thought by those great 
 authorities to be necessary for the perfection of a line of this 
 description, are united in The case of the London and York Line, 
 to a degree that no other can pretend to exceed, and certainly, 
 which no other has yet arrived at. 
 
 Then, my Lord, the estimate for making the fine is 6,500,000k 
 I told the Committee that they would have to deal with millions, 
 before this inquiry closes, almost as familiarly as with thousands. 
 
 The estimate is for 6,500,000k 
 
 The gross revenue, which is to repay us for that outlay, 
 dealing always in round numbers, to facilitate addition and 
 
16 
 
 subtraction, and leaving only ciphers at the close of the sum, 
 the revenue may be stated at 1,000,0001.: and with the deduction 
 of forty per cent, upon it for the annual expenses of the main¬ 
 tenance and the working, the net revenue will be 600,0001.: 
 which, upon the capital I have stated, will, of course, give nine 
 and a half per cent., in the shape of a dividend to the share¬ 
 holders. 
 
 Why then is this railway not to be made? Here is the 
 money. Here are the undertakers. It is the shortest as a 
 trunk line. It is the most complete as connecting the different 
 towns of the locality in its course. Why then should it not be 
 made? It has been my business, and a very painful and a very 
 laborious business it has been, however assisted by those who 
 have gone before me and have rendered that task much lighter, 
 to seek for reasons why this Railway is not to be made. In the 
 document which I hold in my hand, if any where, those reasons 
 are set out. They may be summed up in one, that the Board of 
 Trade has reported against us. Upon what ground does the 
 objection of that most intelligent and most respectable Board 
 rest? As a trunk line they are of opinion that the question 
 between us and the other schemes is pretty evenly balanced. 
 Those other schemes being, as appearing in this Report, an 
 extension of the line from London to Cambridge, through 
 Peterborough to Lincoln, and so to York; that line being 
 formed of the Eastern Counties Line to Cambridge, the Cambridge 
 and Lincoln to Lincoln, and that lingering limb of the Direct 
 Northern from Lincoln to York. Now, my Lord, the balance 
 being held to be even, so far as the trunk is concerned, it would 
 be ungracious in me if I were to detain the Committee by many 
 comments upon the reasons on which that equality is supposed 
 to exist. 
 
 I may shortly state them thus:—While admitting our shorter 
 mileage, the Board of Trade point to our steeper gradients, as, 
 together with the disadvantage in their eyes of not possessing 
 the Farringdon Street Terminus, being a set off to that smaller 
 mileage, and rendering the balance even. Now, as to the 
 steeper gradients, I am bound to call the attention of the Com¬ 
 mittee to the statement which is made in the pages of this 
 Report, because there is an inaccuracy; not the only one by 
 any means which is to be found in the other pages which follow. 
 At page 4 the Report says: “ The main line of the London and 
 York has two miles of its length at an inclination of 1 in 100 
 not that the correction is of much importance, but it so happens 
 that there is only 14 miles so circumstanced; and that is im¬ 
 mediately out of the London station, as in the case of the Lon¬ 
 don and Birmingham at Euston Square. In the case of the 
 London and Birmingham there is about a mile at 1 in 84; in 
 oms, there is a mile and a half of 1 in 100. 
 
 But they go on to say, “ There are 514 miles at an inclina- 
 
1 ? 
 
 tion of 1 in 181 to 1 in 200.” With the exception of the gra- } 
 dient Ihave mentioned immediately outofLoudon,we have, as I j 
 understand; no’ gradient -steeper than 1 in 1 200—a gradient' pro- j 
 nounced by the Board of Trade itself, in their Reports upoir the i 
 West Riding Company’s scheme, as’a first-class gradient,—ahd i 
 that ! gradient continues not for 51i miles, but for 47 miles. ' \ 
 
 Notv, my Lord, the Board go on to say, “ There is nothing in 1 
 these gradients themselves that can he considered as objectionable;” 
 and they further on add, “Recent experience has shoTvn, 
 upon the Brighton 1 Railway, that a train may be worked regularly, 
 with safety and punctuality, at an average speed of 33 miles an 
 hour, including stoppages; and there is nothing upon any portion 
 of the route between London and York, by way of Cambridge, to 
 prevent this, or even a higher speed from being attained, at which 
 rate the journey from London to York could be accomplished in 
 six hours.” The Brighton Railway, which is instanced as giving 
 a good average speed of 33 miles an hour, has gradients of 1 
 in 100 for 2J miles up the New Cross incline, and it has for 34 
 miles, three-fourths of its whole length, gradients of 1 in 264; 
 so that the Brighton would seem rather to be an instance of a 
 line being enabled to maintain this great average speed, without 
 the extremely good gradients to be found on the Cambridge and 
 Lincoln Line. 
 
 But I pass from these matters, where the balance is held 
 evenly between us and our antagonists, with one observation— 
 honourable members are well aware that the improvements in 
 engineering science, and the addition to the power of that 
 important machine, the locomotive engine,' are obliterating diffi¬ 
 culties of levels, and are surmounting day by day steeper gra¬ 
 dients. We may therefore look forward with confidence to the 
 period when science shall have rendered gradients of much less, 
 if not of little consequence; but I am afraid we must look long 
 before we shall find any description of science which shall remove 
 the material objection of miles of distance. Ours, therefore, 
 is an objection to then - scheme of a very permanent nature, whilst 1 
 theirs to ours is only very transitory. 
 
 It is as a local line, or a line for local accommodation, that 
 we are principally objected to by the Board of Trade. Speaking 
 and wishing to speak with the utmost possible respect for those 
 with whom I am called on this occasion widely to differ, I must 
 still say it is, as a local fine especially, that we are entitled, and 
 that we venture to claim the sanction of the Committee of the 
 two Houses of Parliament, as being vastly superior to our 
 rivals. 
 
 Now the first objection which is made by the Board of 
 Trade to our fine as a local line is one which it is important 
 to bring under the notice of the Committee, because it runs 
 through the whole of their Report, and accounts for the 
 whole of their conclusions; and 1 if satisfactorily answered and 
 
18 
 
 disproved, it does, in my humble conception, dispose of the whole 
 of their Report. It will be found, in page 5, near the top, and 
 it is a passage to which I pray the particular attention of the 
 Committee. They say, after having set out what the objects 
 were of connecting the chief towns, and so on ,—“A refer¬ 
 ence to the map loill show how the objects respectively are attained 
 by the London and Yorh and Cambridge and Lincoln Combina¬ 
 tions. If tee disregard for the present all considerations of expense, 
 it may be considered that the London and Yorh scheme on the 
 whole presents a larger and more comprehensive system of commu¬ 
 nication. It forms a new trunk line from London to Peter¬ 
 borough, half way between the London and Birmingham and the 
 Northern and Eastern, and thus it accommodates a greater ex¬ 
 tent of country. Again, by the Loop, or second line from Peter¬ 
 borough, by the way of Boston and Lincoln to Bawtry, combined 
 with the direct line, it traverses a greater extent of country, and 
 places both the towns on the old North Road, Grantham, New¬ 
 ark, and East Retford, and also Lincoln and Boston, in a con¬ 
 tinuous line of communication, which no single line could do; 
 also it comprises branches direct to Sheffield and Wakefield, 
 which places it in a better position for competing with existing 
 lines for the traffic of the manufacturing districts to London.” 
 
 And then comes the sting of the compliment! After having 
 set out the superiority, which we undoubtedly claim, over all our 
 antagonists, they add, “And, on the whole, having 327 miles of 
 new Railway as compared with less than 200 by the opposite com¬ 
 bination, it, of course, traverses a greater extent of country, and 
 thus affords greater accommodation!’ Now, let me take credit, 
 at starting, for the admission of the Board of Trade that we 
 have on the whole a more comprehensive system of commu¬ 
 nication ; and that we have a more direct communication with 
 the West Riding, and termini putting us in a better position for 
 competing with the existing lines for the traffic of the manufac¬ 
 turing district; and that, traversing a greater extent of country, 
 we afford a greater extent of accommodation. And then, as to 
 the objection, it will be found to be in different disguises, or 
 rather, I would say, in different forms and in different apparel, 
 an objection which meets us throughout the Report, and it is 
 this:—“You make 140 miles more of new Railway to accomplish 
 the objects accomplished by your rivals by 140 less. You spend 
 too much money to accomplish the objects achieved by your 
 antagonists at a smaller expense, and therefore their line should 
 be made and not that of London and York.” 
 
 Now, my Lord, that being so, it will be my business to en¬ 
 deavour, as succinctly as I can, to show the Committee that those 
 who framed this Report have been, (not unnaturally, considering 
 the imperfect means of enquiry which were placed at then- dis¬ 
 posal,) led by some strange misrepresentation to the most extra¬ 
 ordinary mistakes in point of fact. There are three proposi- 
 
tions which, I believe, I shall he in a condition to establish be¬ 
 fore the Committee. 1. I shall shew you, that, instead of mahing 
 more, we male fewer miles of new Railway than are to he found in the 
 antagonist system recommended hy the Board of Trade. 2. That we 
 make these fewer miles at no greater, and, I verily believe, at a con¬ 
 siderably less expense than must be incurred to carry out the substi¬ 
 tuted system; and, 3. That when the tioo systems shall be laid down, 
 whether at a greater or a less expense, the accommodation afforded by 
 our line is infinitely superior to the accommodation which theirs can offer; 
 and that, consequently, upon the very shewing of the Board of Trade 
 itself, it is we and not our competitors, icho are entitled to the sanction 
 of Parliament. These are the three points from which I start, 
 and to which I must humbly direct the rest of my observations. 
 I say that, upon the Board of Trade’s own principles, as a test 
 of the accommodation derivable from a railway, their lines, when 
 made, being more instead of fewer miles than ours, will afford 
 less instead of more accommodation than ours will do. 
 
 Now, my Lord, at the bottom of the page to which I have 
 referred, the Committee will find a statement of the mileage of 
 the London and York scheme. There are some little inaccu¬ 
 racies in the items, but they do not affect the total—327 miles. 
 In the passage I read to the Committee it is also stated, that 
 the opposite combination (by which is meant the Board of Trade 
 scheme) presents less than 200 miles. In a subsequent passage 
 (at page 8 of the Report, towards the bottom of the third para¬ 
 graph from the bottom) the Report draws marked attention to 
 this supposed difference between the two schemes, saying,— 
 “Another important difference between the two schemes is in 
 the number of miles of Railway that will require to be worked, 
 in order to accommodate the same principal sources of traffic. 
 By the London and York scheme, as we have seen, 327 miles of 
 Railway must be maintained and worked. The Cambridge sys¬ 
 tem would require, as above stated, about 190 miles of new 
 Railway to be worked, in addition to 51 miles of the existing 
 Northern and Eastern Line from Tottenham to Cambridge; 
 which, however, must bo worked at any rate, and would be, in a 
 great measure, supported by a traffic of its own from Cambridge¬ 
 shire to Norfolk.” 
 
 “ On the whole, therefore,- the London and York scheme 
 would, in all probability, make an additional outlay, as compared 
 with the Cambridge scheme, of 3,000,000?. or 4,000,000?., and 
 would require nearly 90 (or, if we include the line from London 
 to Cambridge, nearly 140) more miles of Railway to be maintained 
 and worked.” 
 
 'Now then, my Lord, is that so or is it not ? Because upon 
 that, as upon a cardinal point, bulges the whole Report of the 
 Board of Trade. The Committee will give me credit, without 
 going through all the passages in the Report, for stating truly. 
 
20 
 
 ting onr greater efficiency, they object to our much greater 
 mileage of new Railway to be constructed, and the greater ex¬ 
 pense involved in that construction. The 190 miles of which 
 the Board speaks is made up in this way; it will be found in the 
 Gazette in which the forthcoming Report of the Board of Trade 
 was announced. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall.—W hat is the date of it ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam.— The Gazette was March the 11th. 
 The Board of Trade gazette against us and in favour of the 
 Cambridge and Lincoln of 83 miles, the Direct Northern 57^ 
 miles from Lincoln to York, the Tottenham Extension, that is 
 the Farringdon Street Extension of 5£ miles, the Bedford and 
 London and Birmingham (that is a branch you will find upon 
 your map from the neighbourhood of Fenny Stratford to Bed¬ 
 ford), which is 16i miles, and the Biggleswade and Hertford 
 Branch (about which there was some little discussion yesterday), 
 which is 25 miles, making the aggregate 187j- miles; these con¬ 
 stitute the 190 miles to which the Board refers. That is the 
 scheme which the Board of Trade, speaking as of 190 or 200 
 miles of new Railway, contrasts with the London and York 
 Railway with 327 miles, and awards to it the palm, upon the 
 ground of its accomplishing the same objects at so very much 
 less cost. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —How many miles of the North-Eastern? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham.- —51 to Cambridge; that is in 
 course of construction already. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —I mean that part which will serve as the 
 approach to London in conjunction with a new fine. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —It is from. Tottenham to Cam¬ 
 bridge 51 miles; this is stated in the passage I read in addi¬ 
 tion to the 190 new miles. Having now described the lines 
 which make up the 190 miles, the antagonist scheme—will the 
 Committee do me the favour to turn to it upon the map, and see 
 whether it can, with any show of reason, be said to approach to 
 a comparison with the utility of the London and York Line. 
 Let the Committee look at it; the line first from London to 
 Cambridge; Cambridge to Peterborough; Peterborough to Lin¬ 
 coln ; Lincoln to York. Here you have a trunk line from London, 
 to York with the Farringdon Street Extension into London. A 
 little to the west you find the Bedford Branch into the London 
 and Birmingham at Bletchley, and the Hertford and Biggleswade 
 Branch to Hertford. 
 
 Mr. Poulett Scrope. —You do not go from Bedford to the 
 London and Birmingham by your line ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Bedford and the London and 
 Birmingham is not in this group, but it was gazetted as part of 
 the scheme—part of the 190 miles which the Board of Trade 
 preferred to our scheme. 
 
 Now a glance at the map will shew how the Board of Trade 
 
21 
 
 scheme carries out the objects of the London and York scheme. 
 The object is twofold. First, a trunk line. I admit that there 
 is a trunk line by the Cambridge scheme far more circuitous 
 than ours, but that forms by far the least valuable part of the 
 scheme. The through traffic from London to York is about 
 one-tenth part of the traffic that comes upon the line. There¬ 
 fore the question of the trunk line is secondary to that of a line 
 for local accommodation. Looking at the greater object, then, 
 and applying to it the doctrines of the Board of Trade itself, the 
 local line ought, as a principal object, to give a communication 
 from each town to the other, and from all the towns directly to 
 the markets, for their produce; viz., the West Riding and 
 London. 
 
 Let me call the attention of the Committee to this by refer¬ 
 ence to the map before them. It will there be seen that the 
 Board of Trade’s system of 190 or 200 miles gave no accommo¬ 
 dation to Huntingdon, no accommodation to Spalding, no ac¬ 
 commodation whatever to Boston, no accommodation whatever 
 to Stamford, no accommodation whatever to Grantham, no ac¬ 
 commodation whatever to Newark, no accommodation whatever 
 to Doncaster, no communication with Sheffield or Rotherham— 
 Rotherham, the great market for the cattle of Lincolnshire. This 
 is a line for local accommodation to connect the towns with all 
 the markets, and with each other! It did neither the one nor 
 the other. It left the towns altogether untouched, and could 
 not therefore connect them with anything. It formed no com¬ 
 munication with the West Riding of York—none whatever—that 
 being the greatest market for the produce of the country which 
 this Railway was to carry thither. It gave no communication 
 with East Retford or any part of the Hundred of Bassetlaw; it 
 gave no communication with Wakefield, the largest corn market 
 in the kingdom; it gave no communication between the manu¬ 
 facturing districts of 'West Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. And 
 yet, forsooth, this is the system which, as a system for local ac¬ 
 commodation, is gazetted by the Board of Trade to supersede 
 the London and York system, which accommodates every town, 
 connects all those towns with each other, and with the markets 
 for their produce, and again connects the great coal fields of the 
 North with this district, suffering from the want of coal; whereas 
 the system recommended in the Gazette by the Board of Trade 
 was utterly destitute of the very means of conveying it. 
 
 But then, my Lord, we shall see there gradually broke upon 
 the mind of the Board of Trade a conviction that the lines of 
 200 miles which they had gazetted, and gazetted as accomplish¬ 
 ing the objects of the London and York Line, were utterly 
 inefficient for that purpose. No doubt there was some one whose 
 interests were deeply at stake, no doubt there was some vast 
 railway proprietor interested in preventing the London and York 
 Trunk being adopted, and, therefore, interested in maintaining 
 
the unfavourable Report of the Board of Trade, who would 
 distinctly whisper in their ear that the system which they had 
 gazetted was so absolutely inefficient as. m the opinion of persons 
 acquainted with Railways, to be, I was about to say, utterly 
 preposterous. 
 
 Of all things the first necessity was to connect the line with 
 the West Riding, to connect Lincolnshire, where agricultural 
 produce and cattle are grown, with the West Riding markets, 
 where they are sold to be consumed. I pray the attention of 
 the Committee to this curious fact, that in the Gazette there is 
 a Report in favour of a Midland Railway from Swinton to Lincoln 
 as to the portion only between Swinton and Doncaster. Turning 
 to the map you will find connected with Doncaster a yellow line 
 to the west which joins the Midland at a place called Swinton. 
 That line upon the map you will see is continued from Doncaster 
 to Lincoln, and it was in fact a Midland Extension from Swinton 
 to Lincohi through Doncaster. What does the Board do? 
 Gazettes its intentions to report to Parliament in favour of that 
 portion of the Swinton and Lincoln Line which lies between 
 Swinton and Doncaster, and into that other unhappy class to 
 which the rejected are banished, casts the same Swinton and 
 Lincoln Railway as to the portion between Doncaster and 
 Lincoln. So that the Board reported in favour of a line from 
 Swinton to Doncaster, but no further, and said—From Doncaster 
 to Lincohi you shall not proceed. But presently they begin to 
 be informed that the lines which they had recommended were so 
 constructed as to give no communication from the trunk through 
 Lincolnshire to the West Riding of Yorkshire and Lancashire. 
 From Doncaster to Gainsborough there was nothing. The Direct 
 Northern, in favour of whose plan, as to this portion, the Board of 
 Trade were reporting, does not pass through Doncaster. On the 
 contrary it goes in a direct line northward, leaving Doncaster 
 several miles to the west; and the line from Swinton gave Don¬ 
 caster no communication at all with the trunk. The London and 
 York Line passes through Doncaster. Having thus gazetted 
 against a line from Doncaster to Gainsborough, the Committee 
 will find, on turning to the Report, page 18, the fact, though 
 not the reason of a total change of opinion: it is there said, 
 “Of these lines w r e may assume that a communication be¬ 
 tween Swinton and Gainsborough is indispensable !” They had 
 gazetted then- intention to report distinctly against a communica¬ 
 tion between Swinton and Gainsborough, while they do actually 
 report in its favour! The Swinton and Doncaster Line connected 
 Doncaster with the Midland Railways only, but did not touch the 
 question of the London and York, or the Direct Northern; it did 
 not communicate with either, but though gazetting against it in 
 March, they reported in its favour in the month of April, and in no 
 ordinary terms, for they say, “we may assume that a communica¬ 
 tion between Swinton and Gainsborough is indispensable.” Why 
 
23 
 
 was it indispensable in April when it was objectionable in March? 
 Why indispensable except for the purpose of giving some 
 colour to the Board’s scheme, as a scheme connecting itself with 
 the West Riding, which, as it stood upon the Gazette in March, 
 it did not even circuitously accomplish. But it goes on, (for it is 
 astonishing how much this line had grown in favour with the 
 Board by the month of April,) “ It affords the shortest and best 
 communication between the two main lines of the Midland and 
 of the London, Cambridge, Lincoln, and York Railways, con¬ 
 necting the important town of Doncaster with both; also it 
 affords a short route from Lincolnshire to Manchester by the 
 Barnsley Junction,” (which has gone after or rather before the 
 Direct Northern, the Bill having been thrown out by the Com¬ 
 mittee,) “ the Barnsley Junction and Sheffield and Manchester 
 Railways, and to Leeds, Wakefield, and the West Riding, and, 
 what is even of more importance, it gives a direct outlet from one 
 of the best Yorkshire coal fields, that of Silkstone, to the East and 
 South. We assume therefore that this communication is one 
 which, under any circumstances, is necessary to be made.” I can 
 assure the Committee, it was with difficulty I could believe that 
 this was the Report of the Board of Trade upon a line they had 
 condemned in the Gazette in the month of March. But, my 
 Lord, it was then necessary to give a colour to the scheme, 
 which was contemplated in the Gazette; as a line connecting 
 Lincolnshire with the West Riding of Yorkshire and Lancashire. 
 
 Mb. Babing Wall. —There are only nine days’ interval in date; 
 you have stated it to be between March and April. The date of 
 the Report of the Board of Trade is the 20th of March, and the 
 date of the Gazette the 11th. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —I think the honourable member 
 is right; and that increases the surprise. The 200 miles will 
 not do; something else jnust be added—that is not the only 
 point; it is now the only addition necessary to be made hi order 
 to make this a line for local accommodation, fit to be put in com¬ 
 parison with the London and York scheme. 
 
 It is no light thing to have to meet a Report of a department 
 of the Government. I know the weight which necessarily belongs 
 to it; but I am, I hope, not transgressing the proper limits of an 
 advocate towards either the Board of Trade or this Tribunal; I 
 feel 1 am discharging my duty towards those whose interests are 
 in my hands, when I take to pieces that Report which has already 
 weighed so heavily upon then- interests; and when, as I trust I 
 shall be enabled to do, I show the Committee that the Board 
 have been themselves so misled as to be utterly incapable of 
 leading the inquiries of others. 
 
 So much for Doncaster. That was to be got into the system, 
 and the connexion with the West Riding obtained, and I have 
 pointed out the course; but Boston also was left out of the 
 system—Boston, the main port on that side of the island!— 
 
Boston, perhaps the greatest corn port to he found anywhere ; 
 and the Board tell us that nothing is so important, in a system 
 of this kind, as to connect all these towns with one another, 
 with London, with the Raihvays leading to the manufacturing 
 districts, and with slipping ports. Some kind friend (who wished 
 to. support the credit of the Board of Trade’s Report, for the 
 purpose of promoting his own interest probably,) reminds them 
 that Boston, the greatest port of all, is out of the system. Then 
 Boston must be introduced. What do we find in Boston ? Boston 
 must be introduced, and accordingly it is introduced at the top 
 of page 8 of the Report. “ To which must be added the follow¬ 
 ing branches, which are proposed by the Cambridge and Lincoln 
 Company, who pledge themselves to apply for the pojver, in 
 order to carry them into effect,” (Why did they not come here 
 for such powers?) in order to complete the accommodation 
 of the districts “provided by the London and York system.” 
 Then there came the Boston Branch, which the Committee will 
 find, from opposite Boston, from the place called Heckington, 
 upon the Cambridge and Lincoln Line, not far south of Lincoln, 
 to Boston, twelve miles, and the Spalding and Stamford Branch, 
 twenty miles. The latter of course passes from Stamford to 
 Spalding, crossing the Cambridge and Lincoln Line, connecting 
 them in a manner which leaves each perched at the end of a 
 branch, Spalding on the one hand, and Stamford on the other. 
 The Committee are quite aware that there is no Bill for this; on 
 the contrary, it is a mere pledge. 
 
 Mh. Dabby.— What I understand you to be arguing is this, 
 that, in order to make their line complete, there should have 
 been added what they contemplated when they wrote their 
 Report. 
 
 Mu. Serjeant Wrangiiaxi. —I tell the Committee plainly that 
 what I am arriving at is this; that after the Gazette was pub¬ 
 lished, the Board found that to attain the objects accomplished 
 by the 327 miles of the London and York scheme, it was not 
 merely necessary to have the 200 miles of new Railway which 
 were gazetted, but that they must actually make a greater 
 number of miles than the London and York system required. 
 This I will prove out of the Report itself. I have spoken of 
 Boston and Spalding. Then there came the extension of the 
 Biggleswade Branch from Biggleswade to Bedford, to meet the 
 Ely and Huntingdon Extension from Huntingdon to Bedford. 
 That will be found at page 14 of the Report. 
 
 Mr. Poulett Schope. —You have not given us the length of 
 the Boston and Spalding Branches. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wranghaji. —Twelve for the Boston Branch 
 and twenty for the Spalding and Stamford. Now at page 14 this 
 will be found. “ In arriving at this conclusion, we by no means 
 consider that the result of such a course would be to deprive the 
 counties of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Huntingdonshire, of 
 
25 
 
 the benefits of Railway communication. On the contrary, the 
 proposed branch from the Northern and Eastern Line at Hertford 
 would, at a comparatively moderate expense, afford a communi¬ 
 cation for Hitchin and Biggleswade with London, which could 
 admit of an easy extension, if required, to Bedford, where it 
 would meet the branch to the London and Birmingham Railway, 
 which is evidently required to give Bedfordshire an outlet to 
 the West, although the London and York, with its Bedford 
 Branch, should be constructed.” Let me pause a moment there. 
 That Bedford Branch to the London and Birmingham Line gives 
 nothing that the London and York Line does not give a great 
 deal better. All the Bedford people want is a communication 
 with London and with the manufacturing districts of the North. 
 This communication will be given by a branch from Bedford to the 
 London and York Railway infinitely more direct, than going round 
 by Bletchley, and by the Midland Counties Railway, into Yorkshire. 
 Their intercourse with Birmingham is next to nothing: it is 
 with the manufacturing districts in the North that they want 
 communication. I make the observation to take off the effect 
 of the statement in the Report. The Report then proceeds, 
 “The Ely and Bedford scheme also proposes, by an easy line, to 
 continue this communication northwards, through St. Neots and 
 Huntingdon.” They will very soon actually be making the whole 
 of our line. They have now got from near Hertford up as far 
 as Huntingdon mile for mile by the side of the condemned trunk 
 line of the London and York. 
 
 That will make the extension from Biggleswade to Bedford 
 12 miles ; the extension from Bedford to Huntingdon is 15 miles. 
 Then let us look a little further north. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —How do they propose to get from Biggleswade 
 to Bedford ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeaxt Wrangiiam.— They propose to extend the 
 Hertford and Biggleswade Branch; that is, if the parties choose 
 to do it next session. There is no Bill for it before Parliament, 
 or any thing of the sort. There is no communication from 
 Bigglesw'ade, and the country northward; unless a Junction be 
 made by that scheme. By ours, there is a direct access both 
 north and south, the importance of which the Committee will 
 judge of when they hear the evidence. By their Biggleswade 
 Branch there is nothing but the communication with London; 
 therefore, in order to give a Northern communication, they must 
 extend, as they imagine that the parties will some day choose to 
 extend, the Biggleswade Branch to Bedford, to join the Hunting¬ 
 don and Ely Line extending from Huntingdon to Bedford. 
 When they get to Huntingdon they would cross by the Ely Line 
 on to St. Ives; where the Cambridge Line crosses it, going 
 northwards, and giving, no doubt, a kind of Northern communica¬ 
 tion ; not like the London and York communication, but some¬ 
 thing plausible and colourable. 
 
26 
 
 Now let us ton further north. Boston, as I have already 
 stated, they, in the first instance, altogether forgot. It was left 
 out altogether of the Lincolnshire system of Railways. They 
 subsequently suggested a branch from Boston to Heekington. 
 But it occurred to them also, that there was no communication 
 between Boston and Grantham and Newark; accordingly, at 
 page 20 of then- Report, they speak of the Newark and Sheffield 
 Line, which was a Line from Newark to Sheffield, originally pro¬ 
 posed, as the Report states, “with a view to join the London 
 and York at Newark. Rut its promoters state,” (I wonder where 
 they stated it P) “ that it admits of an easy extension to Sleaford, 
 so that the Boston Branch was continued by a connection of the 
 Sheffield and Newark Line from Newark.” That is, 24 more 
 miles of new Railway, and still poor Grantham was left out alto¬ 
 gether. It was not touched. What was the next suggestion of 
 the Board ? An easy branch from that to Grantham. “ Gran¬ 
 tham might also be connected with this line by a short and easy 
 branch.” For this there is no Bill in Parliament, nothing of the 
 kind; but this suggestion adds 6 miles more each way. 
 
 Adding together all these supplementary projects, you have 
 from Swinton to Lincoln—the line which the Board gazetted 
 against on the 11th of March—33 miles now found to be 
 f< under any circumstances indispensable,” and the several others 
 above enumerated, which absolutely add to the original 187 
 miles, no less than 122 miles of most inconvenient branches, 
 in order to place the Board’s schemes m decent comparison 
 with the London and York. 
 
 Mb. Baking Wall. —What I understand the learned Counsel 
 to say is, that there are 122 miles which are recommended in 
 the Report of the Board of Trade, which were not gazetted 
 nor are now before Parliament. 
 
 Mb. Serjeant Wbangham. — : Quite so, Sir. Some of them are, 
 however, before Parliament; but there are 122 miles of Railway 
 in addition to the 187 originally recommended, and which are 
 essential to enable that system at all to compete with the London 
 and York system. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —Essential according to the Report of the 
 Board of Trade. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —Exactly so, Sir. The Report’s 
 language is,—“ Grantham also might be connected with this line 
 by a short and easy branch, and thus all the principal objects of the 
 London and York scheme attained.” At what do you think the 
 Board of Trade deem it right to say? “ At a tytiie of the ex¬ 
 pense.” That is certainly a slashing style of writing, “ a tithe 
 of the expense." 
 
 But I have not done with additional branches; branches indis¬ 
 pensable to make up the deficiency of the system. There is a 
 certain line from Syston to Peterborough passing through Par¬ 
 liament; twelve miles of that from Stamford to Peterborough is 
 
necessary to connect Stamford with the North, by the Cambridge 
 system; whilst from Peterborough to Stamford is twelve miles, 
 equally indispensable to connect Stamford with the South. That 
 is spoken of in page 23 of the Report. One of these lengths of 
 twelve miles would be entirely unnecessary under the London 
 and York system. Then the Board finds at last that Wakefield 
 had been omitted, the great corn market. In these local lines 
 winch, as their leading object, were to connect the great towns 
 of the district with the great markets for their produce, they 
 had forgotten Wakefield. We must, however, add to the Board’s 
 system the line from Snaith to Wakefield, part of the Wakefield 
 and Goole scheme, which is mentioned at page 21, and is 22 
 miles in length. 
 
 The Report describes, among others, as an advantage of 
 that line, “ that it will afford a good connexion from Leeds, the 
 West Riding, and the manufacturing districts, to the main line 
 from London to York, and will supply the purpose of a necessary 
 branch from that line.” That is, it w ill, in plain English, supply 
 the purpose of our Wakefield Branch. Honourable members are 
 quite aware of the enormous amount of corn sold at Wakefield, 
 and that it is a necessary part of this system. Add those 12 
 and 22 miles, and you have 156 miles of Branch Railway, to be 
 added to 187, in order to be able to institute a comparison, in 
 point of efficiency, between the two systems, that is, to enable 
 the Cambridge system to serve the places which the York and 
 London does. Now r , 156 and 187 make, not 190, not 2Q0, but 
 343 miles of new Railway, to be compared with 327 by our 
 system. The whole Report of the Board of Trade turns upon 
 this; that in order to accomplish our system, (admitted to be the 
 most comprehensive and the best,) 327 miles of new Railway are 
 required against 200 by the Cambridge and Lincoln system. I 
 have shown you that, in order to pretend to accomplish the 
 objects which the London and York by 327 miles accomplish, 
 the Board are driven to construct 343 miles instead of 200; and 
 therefore, the very adverse inference which followed the com¬ 
 parison instituted by the Board of Trade between the 327 and 
 the 200, becomes reversed, as a matter of course, in our favour, 
 when you compare the 343 miles with the 327 of which our line 
 consists, although the Board of Trade proposes to start from 
 Cambridge while w-e start from London. 
 
 I have now' made out this point; that instead of there being- 
 less Railway to be made for the Cambridge system, there is 
 more; that all the argument of the Board of Trade concerning 
 the annual cost of 1000k a mile for working, tells against our 
 adversaries instead of ourselves. And every advantage which 
 the Board attributes to the smaller number of miles passes over 
 from then- camp to ours. 
 
 I will next endeavour to show' the Committee that it will not 
 cost less to accomplish the lines suggested by the Board of 
 
28 
 
 Trade. I think, my Lord, I must have satisfied the Committee, 
 not by an argument of my own, but by a reference to the pages 
 of the Report, that the Board of Trade themselves deal with 
 these accessions to the Cambridge system as necessary for the 
 efficiency of that scheme as a whole to render it worthy of com¬ 
 parison with ours. But surely, without any reference to the 
 Board of Trade, a mere glance at the map will be amply suffi¬ 
 cient to satisfy any honourable member that every one of these 
 branches is required in order to accomplish the object which the 
 London and York Line alone does accomplish. I trust to be able 
 to satisfy them also that, were they even made, and the 343 miles 
 of Railway completed, they would not bear a comparison with 
 the London and York system in point of efficiency; and that 
 even their greater number of new miles, to say nothing of the 
 51 miles between Cambridge and London, (which, though not to 
 be constructed, must yet be paid for by the public who use it,) 
 the system would be unable to effect the objects which the 
 London and York accomplishes with anything like the same 
 perfection. 
 
 But, before I come to that; one word upon the question of 
 expense. The Board of Trade assumes that our lines will cost a 
 certain sum of money, and be much more expensive than the 
 lines in the Cambridge system. One does not know to what 
 extent the Board mean to limit that observation. It will be 
 found in page 8 of the Report,- about the middle of the page. 
 “ There seems to be quite as much reason for considering it as a 
 probable residt, that the whole Cambridge system may be com¬ 
 pleted for a sum not exceeding 5,000,0001. or 6,000,0001., as that 
 the London and York system, as above described, may be com¬ 
 pleted for 8,000,0001. or 10,000,0001.” One is somewhat at a loss 
 to know to what the former and smaller sum refer. It was pro¬ 
 bably intended to be the limit to what was then considered, in the 
 estimation of the Board of Trade, the Cambridge system, that is, 
 the lines gazetted, and the three or four lines mentioned at the 
 top of the same page—the Boston Branch, the Spalding and the 
 Stamford Branch, the Biggleswade Branch of the Eastern 
 Counties, and about fifteen miles to complete the communica¬ 
 tion between Doncaster and Gainsborough. Up to that period, 
 the Cambridge system had not embarked into more than those 
 additional lines, besides those originally gazetted; and, therefore, 
 it is probable, that, in writing that passage, (for I must be per¬ 
 mitted to observe, as matter of criticism, there is internal evi¬ 
 dence that the whole Report was not a contemporaneous pro¬ 
 duction; some parts are later than others in point of origin, 
 because they are inconsistent with each other, and appear to 
 have been modified by a change of circumstances pending the 
 composition of the Report,) nothing more was meant. I think, 
 however, I may have disposed of that statement, since I have 
 shown the Committee that the very much smaller amount of new 
 
29 
 
 mileage to be constructed is itself erroneous. But if you glance 
 for a moment to the estimate— 
 
 Chairman.— In 327 miles you include, do you not, the 51 
 already constructed? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgham.— No, my Lord. The 327 miles is 
 from London by the London and York Line. 
 
 Chairman. —In the 343 miles do you include them? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam.— No, it is 394 with that 51 miles. 
 I -will tell the Committee what it is that makes the 343 miles— 
 the Cambridge and Lincoln 83 miles, the Direct Northern 57, the 
 Tottenham Extension 5J, the Bedford and London and Birming¬ 
 ham 164 miles, and the other Branches. 
 
 Mr. Poulett Scrope. —You do not execute that, therefore 
 you ought not to count it; you do not accomplish that with your 
 system. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangilui. —Yes, we do indeed; the Bedford 
 Branch connects Bedford with our line, and takes the Bedford 
 traffic more quickly where it seeks to go, to the West Riding of 
 York, than does this Bedford Branch. 
 
 Chairman. —You do not connect Bedford with the West and 
 the Birmingham Line? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam.— No, there is no object in doing 
 that. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall.—T he 16 miles should be taken into 
 account you say? 
 
 Mr, Serjeant Wrangiiam. —We do not connect Bedford with 
 the Birmingham Line: but w r e connect it better than the Bir¬ 
 mingham Line with the places with which it seeks to be connected, 
 namely, London, on the one hand, and the West Riding on the 
 other. The Bedford Branch 164 miles, Biggleswade and Hert¬ 
 ford 25; those are the gazetted lines, and they are 187 j miles. 
 Those are the 190 miles which the Board speak of, over and over 
 again, as the 190 miles Of Railway. Then there is the Boston 
 Branch of 12 miles, the Spalding Branch of 20 miles, the Bedford 
 Extension from the Bigglesw'ade Branch of 12, and the extension 
 from Bedford to Huntingdon 15 miles. This is the extension 
 from Huntingdon of the Ely and Huntingdon Line, till it takes 
 the Biggleswade, on its extension, on its way to Bedford so as to 
 complete the trunk line. 
 
 Chairman, —The Ely and Huntingdon is how many miles? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —The Bedford Extension to Hun¬ 
 tingdon is 15 miles. That is part of the Ely and Huntingdon. 
 There is a Bill passing through Parliament now for making it 
 from Ely to Huntingdon; and it is an extension of that line to 
 Bedford. The Board then take notice of the Branch onwards 
 from Stamford to Newark, which is 24 miles. Then there is that 
 cheap and easy branch out of this branch again to Grantham, 
 which is 6 miles; and then you have the long rejected and ill 
 used, but now adopted Gainsborough and Swinton Line of 33 
 
miles. Then there is the line from Stamford to Peterborough, 
 which is 12 miles; and the line from Wakefield to Snaitli, part 
 of the Wakefield and Goole Line, out of the Direct Northern 
 Line to Wakefield,"which is 22 miles. 
 
 Mk. Poulett Scrope. —How can you count that? It is for a 
 totally independent object, it is to communicate between Goole 
 and' Wakefield; 
 
 Mk. Serjeant Wrangham. —I count it only from Snaith to 
 Wakefield. I am reading from’ the Board of Trade’s Report. 
 “It will afford a good connection from Leeds, the West Riding, 
 and the manufacturing districts, to the main Eastern Line from 
 London to York, and will supply the puipose of a necessary branch 
 from that line.” It is really a substitute for our Doncaster and 
 Wakefield Branch. 
 
 Mr. Poulett Sckope. —The fine which you counted through 
 Doncaster and Gainsborough is connected with Wakefield ? 
 
 Mn. Serjeant Wrangham. —I do not mean to say there is not 
 a Railway communication; but, for any thing like a rapid commu¬ 
 nication, this is the Wakefield Branch of their system; that 
 which we have from Doncaster, they have from Snaith to Wake¬ 
 field. The great object is to compare the merits of the two 
 systems, as getting most directly to the great mart, where the 
 produce of the district is to be disposed of: and it is so treated 
 by the Board of Trade. Without it they have not any thing like 
 an immediate communication with the line. 
 
 Mr. Poulett Scrope. —The Board of Trade says the question 
 has reference to the extension of Railway accommodation to the 
 port of Goole. Yours does not go near Goole ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —I do not touch the part which 
 accommodates the port of Goole; but this part is absolutely 
 essential. The Board of Trade says, it supplies the place of a 
 necessary branch from the Direct Northern; that is to say, 
 that a branch from the direct Northern to Wakefield is ne¬ 
 cessary. 
 
 Chairman. —You mean, that, as Wakefield is to be reached, 
 you reach it from Doncaster, and they must reach it from 
 Snaith ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Yes. The Board of Trade says 
 that it is necessary, and does so supply the necessity. That 
 makes up 156 additional miles beyond the 190. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —In these numbers, which you have given us, 
 from the 12 miles to the 22, do you maintain that all are 
 branches, which, according to different parts of the Board 
 of Trade’s Report, are necessary to their lateral system of 
 Railway ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Yes. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall.—I understand you to say also that they 
 are distinctly recommended by the Board of Trade ? 
 
 Mr, Serjeant Wrangham. —And not only that; but I am satis- 
 
31 
 
 fled that if honourable members will look at the map, they will 
 see that they are indispensable to the efficiency of the antagonist 
 system. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —And not one of those lines is gazetted or 
 recommended ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangilasi. —Yes, Sir, recommended. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —Recommended by the Board of Trade, 
 but not gazetted ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wranciixm.— The Syston and Peterborough, to 
 which my learned friend objects, is gazetted in favour of, but it is 
 not gazetted as part of this Cambridge scheme. To render this 
 scheme efficient, all of this new Railway is required; and it 
 appears upon this Report that it is so. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall.— We have nothing to do with the Report; 
 I want to know what has been recommended by the Board of 
 Trade, and what has not been gazetted; that is to say, what 
 has been recommended, and what the public derive no advantage 
 from. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —I will repeat the reference; which, 
 perhaps, it may be convenient to honourable members to take 
 down, to be able to consult. The Boston Branch, which is 12 
 miles long, is not gazetted, and is not before Parliament; that is 
 in page 8 of the Report. The Spalding and Stamford Branch, 
 which is referred to at the same place, is under the same circum¬ 
 stances ; it is not gazetted and is not before Parliament. The 
 Bedford Extension from the Biggleswade Branch, which is referred 
 to at page 14, is not gazetted, and not before Parliament. So 
 also with respect to the Huntingdon Extension, which follows. 
 Those are referred to at page 14 of the Report. The Boston 
 Branch which we have referred to, and the extension of it from 
 Hecldngton to Newark, referred to at pages 15 and 20 of the 
 Report, are not gazetted, and not before Parliament. The 
 Grantham Branch is also mentioned at page 15, and is not 
 gazetted, and not before Parliament. From Gainsborough to 
 Swinton is before Parliament, was gazetted against, and reported 
 in favour of; at page 18 it is declared to be an indispensable 
 branch under any circumstances. 
 
 Mr. Hildyard.— Not gazetted against altogether. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgiiam.— From Lincoln to Doncaster. 
 Then there is the Syston and Peterborough, and the Snaith and 
 Wakefield, which are both before Parliament, which were not 
 gazetted at that time as part of the then contemplated Cambridge 
 system. These are at pages 21 and 23. There is also at page 
 17 an interval which is not before Parliament. After recom¬ 
 mendin'? part of the Direct Northern to be united with the 
 Cambridge and Lincoln, it says, at the bottom of that page, “ A 
 short interval of about two miles at Lincoln would remain to be 
 filled up; but the levels of the two lines, and the nature of the 
 country, make it perfectly easy to attain this object, which might 
 
be done, either by adopting a short portion of the plans and sec¬ 
 tions of the Lincoln Leeds and York Line, or by an application 
 to Parliament next year:” so that there are two miles more not 
 before Parliament. 
 
 Now as I am coming to the question of the expense, perhaps 
 the Committee will find this is the most convenient time to ad¬ 
 journ. The subject opens upon us as we advance. 
 
 Adjouhked to To-morrow at Twelve o’Clock. 
 
ffiottgc of flommtmg. 
 
 SELECT COMMITTEE 
 
 LONDON AND YORK RAILWAY BILL. 
 
 (GROUP X.) 
 
 WEDNESDAY; 30th APRIL, 1845. 
 
 LORD COURTENAY in the Chair. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgiiam. —My Lord, I will, with your 
 Lordship’s permission, proceed with my commentary upon the 
 document which lies upon the table of the Committee, and into 
 which I had partially entered yesterday. My Lord, yesterday 
 I directed the attention of the Committee to the errors into 
 which the authors of that Report have been misled, when they 
 compared the quantities of new Railway necessary to be made 
 in order to carry out the two antagonist systems. I hope that the 
 Committee were satisfied by that commentary, that the real 
 number of new miles necessary to be made in order to carry out 
 the antagonist system to the London and York is not, as it is 
 stated by the Board of Trade, 190 or 200, but that, in point of 
 fact, to put the two systems in a state admitting of comparison, 
 it was necessary to make 343 new miles of Railway on the part 
 of the Cambridge system, to be added also to the existing 51 
 miles already in the course of construction between London and 
 Cambridge. Having recalled that fact to the Committee I 
 decline any further observations upon the question of distances, 
 and I dismiss therefore the first of those three propositions which 
 I ventured to state at the outset to the Committee. 
 
 The second proposition I now proceed with is, “ That whereas 
 the Board of Trade represent the making of the London and 
 York Line as an unnecessary waste of uncounted millions, it will 
 in fact require as much, if not more, for the construction of 
 their own scheme.” And I will then draw the attention of the 
 Committee to the third proposition, “ That even when that out¬ 
 lay shall have been incurred, and that larger distance of mileage 
 constructed, the system will present no public accommodation at 
 all comparable to that which we shall oiler.” 
 
34 
 
 My Lord, I shall not think it necessary to detain the Com¬ 
 mittee long upon that matter, because, in point of fact, the 
 second proposition is in a great measure involved in the first; 
 inasmuch as it will he no difficult conclusion to come to, that (if 
 the Board of Trade were wrong in supposing that 200 miles only 
 were required, when, the fact is, that 343 are required,) they are 
 wrong also in their estimate of the aggregate expense which 
 will he incurred. 
 
 Now, my Lord, the estimate for the London and York Line 
 is 6,500,0001., as I have already stated to the Committee. We 
 believe that the estimate will not he exceeded. The Board of 
 Trade, at page 7, put it at not less than 8,000,0001., for I really 
 cannot attempt to deal with their probabilities or improbabilities 
 of mere conjectural addition to the estimate, with no fact stated 
 upon which it is to rest, when they go on to say it is by no means 
 improbable that the amount might he so and so, nine or ten mil¬ 
 lions ; they put it, after a somewhat elaborate calculation, at not 
 less than eight millions. 
 
 My Lord, in the first instance, let me state the ground upon 
 which that estimate rests. The engineer who has drawn up that 
 estimate is Mr. Cubitt; an engineer whose professional reputa¬ 
 tion, as your Lordship well knows, is no mean one. I think, my 
 Lord, Mr. Cubitt’s professional character fully warrants me in 
 asserting that his estimate may he safely depended upon. Among 
 all the names which have of late been illustrious, for that is a 
 term I am entitled to use, there is none more illustrious than Mr. 
 Cubitt’s, and if there he any one quality, without invidiously 
 comparing him with his compeers, for which he is more than any 
 other conspicuous, it is for the caution and safety which mark all 
 his’ calculations—and I say, therefore, with confidence, speaking 
 probably in the hearing of, and knowing that I speak subject to 
 the commenting of those well competent to form an opinion 
 upon the subject, that there is no one among all the engineers to 
 be found upon whose estimates a dependance can be more safely 
 placed. 
 
 Mr. Cubitt being responsible for the accuracy of his estimate, 
 he will he produced before the Committee. He may he taken 
 into every detail of that estimate, and I invite the most sifting 
 inquiry upon the part of my learned friends who oppose us, 
 because, I am very sure, that the more closely that inquiry is 
 pressed, and the more minute the investigation, I may say the 
 scrutiny, which may be put in force against him, the clearer will 
 be the conclusion to which the Committee will he led, that he is 
 correct in the estimate which we lay before the Committee, and 
 that the works may in all human probability he completed for 
 the sum which he has named. 
 
 Now, what reasons were alleged for the estimate which is 
 thus hazarded in the Report which is before you? First of all, 
 what items are contained in that estimate? The Committee will 
 
35 
 
 see that the Report states at p. 7, “ On the whole, therefore, 
 we believe, that we should not he warranted in assuming, as at 
 all a probable event, that the London and York scheme, as now 
 proposed, could be completed with stations, metropolitan ter¬ 
 minus, and the requisite working stock of engines, carriages, 
 &c., for a less sum than 8,000,000?.” It is important to ascertain 
 how much in the opinion of the Board is to be added to the 
 original estimate, in respect of the requisite working stock of 
 engines and carriages, for the Committee well understands that 
 Mr. Cubitt’s estimate of 0,500,000?. does not cover the working 
 stock of the Railway. Now, immediately above the passage, 
 which I have read to the Committee, is a calculation from the 
 Tabular form, and which enables me to arrive at a conclusion as 
 to how much the Board of Trade conceive themselves called 
 upon to add to the estimate in respect to the working stock. 
 In different heads of charge which have been incurred in respect 
 of the three Railways in that Table, the Committee will see, in 
 the last column, the cost of the carrying establishment per mile; 
 without going into the particular sums named for each of the 
 three, it is sufficient to say, that the average is 3383?. per mile 
 of the Railway. The three are, as the Committee will see, 3000?. 
 for one, 4800?. for the other, and 2350?. for the third; the 
 average being 3383?. per mile; that multiplied by 327, gives 
 about 1,000,000?., so that we can now calculate accurately, 
 how much was added for working stock and engines and car¬ 
 riages; and that reduces at once, as the Committee will see, 
 the Board’s estimate of 8,000,000?. to 7,000,000?. for the con¬ 
 struction. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall.—S ix millions and a half and a million. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Whang it am. —I am dealing with the Board’s 
 estimate, which is 8,000,000?. including the carrying stock, which 
 is not in the six millions, and a half, but which is in the eight 
 millions, and amounts to 1,000,000?. upon 327 miles of Railway. 
 It follows that for the mere construction of the line the 8,000,000?. 
 should be read as 7,000,000?. There is therefore no very wide 
 interval between the estimate of Mi'. Cuhitt of six millions and 
 a half, and the 7,000,000?. at which the Board have chosen to 
 put it. 
 
 There is one remark which I cannot avoid making at this 
 period of the case, and which I must say, I think, should have 
 presented itself to the minds of those who drew up this Report. 
 Mi-. Cubitt presents his estimate to the Board of Trade; the 
 Board of Trade object to the estimate as insufficient, and they 
 treat it as almost an impossibility that the works should be com¬ 
 pleted within that estimate. I think the least that an engineer 
 of Mr. Cubitt’s experience and well-known caution might have 
 expected was, that the Board of Trade—before this Report was 
 published, which, if any weight belonged to it, was calculated to 
 inflict injury upon the professional reputation of the engineer 
 
responsible for the estimate—should have sent for Mr. Cubitt; 
 that they should have put questions to him,; that they should 
 have stated their difficulties and asked for explanation at his 
 hands;—I think that is the least that we and Mr. Cubitt had a 
 right to expect before the sentence of condemnation had issued. 
 No such course was taken. From the first moment down to this 
 hour, no explanation, no question, no opportunity of showing the 
 Board that they were in error, or of his being convicted of error, 
 has been afforded to Mr. Cubitt, or to those whom he represents 
 and who are guided by his advice. I make that observation, 
 because I think it is one that I am bound to make in justice to 
 Mr. Cubitt and those for whom I am appearing here, and having 
 made it, I proceed to look, for a moment, at the ground upon 
 which the Board have come to the conclusion, that that estimate 
 is one under the probable actual cost. 
 
 The Committee will observe that it is done after somewhat 
 a curious fashion. It was not done by that process which I 
 have suggested as the proper one, viz., by taking the estimate, 
 examining it with the sections and the plans and those vuhciai 
 which shew the expense of each portion of the work; but it is 
 done by taking the first 112 miles out of London, and com¬ 
 paring them with what is said to have been the cost of con¬ 
 structing a Railway made many years ago, and made at a time 
 when Railways, as far as economy and science in then- con¬ 
 struction are concerned, were,. I may be permitted to say, in 
 then- infancy. 
 
 I will venture to say that if the question be put to any 
 engineer as to the propriety of a comparison of the actual cost 
 of the London and Birmingham Railway, and the cost at which 
 it could now be constructed, he would treat it as a preposterous 
 inference to say that the cost of constructing that Railway now 
 would be what it cost several years ago. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —What was the date of the construc¬ 
 tion of t rat Railway ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgham. —It was one of the early ones, 
 I understand. It has been open ten years at all events—an age 
 in the progress of engineering experience and knowledge. 
 
 Every year and every month has added to the knowledge of 
 engineers in the art of saving money in the construction of their 
 Railways; and I will venture to say that any engineer, upon 
 whose candour, knowledge, and experience you can depend, will 
 readily admit, if he is disposed to speak his own honest senti¬ 
 ments to the Committee, that he has thrown away vast sums in 
 the construction which he would now be able to save. 
 
 But, my Lords, let the topic, such as it is, or the argument, 
 be worth what it may, it does not at all events possess the 
 virtue of originality. It is one which has been handled by an 
 able master of the art of Railway rhetoric already. The Com¬ 
 mittee have all heard of a gentleman of great celebrity in what 
 
37 
 
 is called the Railway world; I mean a gentleman of whom I 
 wish to speak (I do not know whether he is hearing me at this 
 moment, but of whom, whether in his presence or absence, I beg 
 the Committee to understand that I wish to speak as I am sure 
 I shall always continue to feel) with the sentiments of the utmost 
 regard as an individual. But he is a partizan. It is a gentleman 
 who, if mankind were to be divided into classes, might be pointed 
 out as the chief, and representative of the shareholding class. 
 He is, as the Committee perhaps are aware, deeply interested, 
 above all other lines, in the line of the Midland Counties Rail¬ 
 way, to which this is to be an antagonistic Northern trunk. He 
 is the Chairman of the Midland Railway from York to Rugby, 
 and of course he is deeply interested in the defeat of this Bill. 
 My Lord, I am very far from objecting to Mr. Hudson indulging 
 himself in any topic which he may think suited to his audience 
 at Derby, his shareholders around him; the more specious and 
 the more plausible, perhaps the better will they like it. 
 
 Chairman. —We rely upon it that you are going to bring 
 us back to the matter immediately before you. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Oh yes, my Lord. 
 
 Chairman. —We do not understand why we went to Derby 
 at all or heard anything of Mr. Hudson. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —So far the Board of Trade are 
 connected with this individual, that a certain portion of this 
 Report had already appeared in print, being a portion of the 
 speech of the gentleman whom I have named at the place I 
 have mentioned. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —What have we to do with that ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —If the honourable member 
 thinks that it is not material that the Board of Trade reporting 
 for the Committee should have taken a passage out of a speech 
 of an advocate of one of the parties, and placed it in a document 
 of this nature, I am quite sure I shall—• 
 
 Chairman. —We do not wish a matter of this great import¬ 
 ance to interfere with your discretion. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —I am satisfied with having 
 called the attention of the Committee to the circumstance that 
 this comparison originated not in the chambers of the Board of 
 Trade, but had already appeared before the public in the 
 columns of a newspaper, reporting the speech of Mr. Hudson 
 at Derby. The Committee, however, upon this very subject, 
 which more nearly concerns me, sees the injustice of applying 
 such a principle as a guide to a deliberative body in a calcu¬ 
 lation as to the expense of constructing this Railway; and I 
 think that I cannot put it more strongly than by suggesting to 
 the Committee, whether the estimate of any Railway, now under 
 the consideration of Parliament, could stand the test of a com¬ 
 parison with the expense of constructing a Railway of a similar 
 
character teij or twelve years ago; when the engineers were not 
 at all in possession of the requisite information and experience 
 to enable them to diminish the vast expenses which they then 
 incurred. 
 
 Applying the principle to these very Railways under the 
 consideration of the Committee, there is a certain Railway of 
 which the Committee have heard,—the Farringdon Street 
 Extension, which forms a feature in the Cambridge system of 
 the Northern Line. It is constantly referred to in this Report 
 as the most favourable feature of that system; whenever an 
 objection is suggested to that system, or an advantage alluded 
 to as belonging to us its antagonist. the Farringdon Street Ter¬ 
 minus is always brought to bear as a compensating advantage 
 on their part. They take the estimate of that, a line 5i miles 
 in length from the terminus in Hatton Garden,—but they do not 
 apply to it the principle of a comparison with bygone Railways; 
 they reserve such a comparison for our owii special benefit on 
 the London and York Line. What is the estimate? The esti¬ 
 mate there is for 5-1- miles of distance, I believe, or at the 
 rate of 150,0001. a mile through the town. There are Railways 
 constructed even later than the London and Bu-minsrham. which 
 are of a precisely similar character to that. Take the Blackwall 
 Railway. You cannot have an instance more strictly parallel. 
 The resemblance between the two is much nearer than between 
 the London and Birmingham and the London and York. 
 
 What was the cost of that Railway? It will appear before 
 the Committee that the cost of the Blackwall Railway was 
 exactly double the estimate per mile of the Farringdon Exten¬ 
 sion, and yet throughout the calculation of this Report the lower 
 estimate is adopted, as a matter of course, as accurate for the 
 Farringdon Street Extension; whereas by applying the principle 
 of this comparison, which is urged against us with respect to the 
 London and Birmingham, to Farringdon Street Extension, that 
 800,0001. must be converted into 1,500,0001. or 1,600,0001. Am I 
 asking the Committee to take that way of estimating the expense 
 of the larrmgdon Street Extension? 
 
 No, I hold it to be utterly unfair. I should conceive myself to 
 be deluding the Committee if I asked them to infer that because 
 some years ago the Blackwall Railway cost 300,0001. a mile, 
 the Greenwich Railway 250,0001., it would be impossible that a 
 Railway could be now constructed under similar circumstances 
 at an amount under half of the expense in the one case, and very 
 much less than the other. But if we do not ask that principle 
 to be applied to our antagonists, neither can we submit to its 
 application to ourselves, and all that we ask of the Committee 
 is, in each case to be guided by the circumstances of the case, 
 and by the evidence which shall be adduced before them applied 
 to those circumstances. 
 
 If the Committee for a moment cast then- eye upon the map, 
 
they will see the portion of our line most objected to, from Lon¬ 
 don proceeding immediately northwards, lying between London 
 and Huntingdon. If the schemes suggested by the Board of Trade 
 were to he carried out to the full, there would be constructed a 
 line of Railway exactly parallel to ours, mile by mile, passing over 
 the same ground from a point in the neighbourhood of Welwyn, 
 where the Hertford and Biggleswade Branch comes in upon the 
 line of the London and York at the town of Hitchin;—so that at 
 all events the expense could not be very different between the 
 construction of our line at these points and the construction of 
 the line suggested by the Board of Trade. There remains only 
 20 miles from that point to London, which putting it at the 
 estimate at which it is supposed by my learned friend it can 
 alone be accomplished (namely at 40,0001. a mile), it will only 
 amount to 800,0001., an expense which is itself balanced at once 
 by the estimated cost, to say nothing of any probable increase 
 of the estimate of the Farringdon Street Terminus, which is the 
 extremity of the other and the antagonist system. Remem¬ 
 bering also that even if that line should have been made between 
 Huntingdon and Hertford, it would not confer upon the country 
 which it traverses the same extended means of communication 
 w'liich rvould belong to the London and York Line, because it 
 would give no communication northward except of the most 
 circuitous character. 
 
 There is another topic, and one only, connected with this 
 subject of expense, which I will touch before I leave it. It is 
 urged by the Board, as an objection to our scheme in page 8 of 
 the Report—under the hypothesis as unfounded as I have shown 
 it to be, that our line involves the making of a vast many more 
 new miles of Railway than the antagonist system—that the 
 average expenditure of maintaining and working a good passenger 
 line of average traffic, cannot safely be taken at less than about 
 10001. per mile per annum; and therefore the inference is, that 
 inasmuch as that the Board conceive 190,0001. a year to be wanted 
 on the other side and 327,0001. on ours—whilst they assume that 
 ours will cost one or tw r o millions more capital—the London and 
 York scheme would be more expensive than that of the Cambridge 
 and Lincoln, by an amount represented by an annual charge of 
 from 150,0001. to 200,0001. a year. I will not at this moment 
 stop to inquire whether that doctrine is correct, viz., that 10001. 
 a year is the annual cost of maintaining a good passenger line 
 with average traffic, but if it be so, I am entitled to the benefit of 
 it when I show the Committee that 343 miles is wanted for the 
 opposite system, and only 327 for ours; for by the difference 
 between those numbers will the annual expenditure be increased 
 upon then's, and also in addition there will be incurred, by the 
 public using the Railway, a sum of 51,0001. a year upon the 51 
 miles of line from London to Cambridge; so that it appears 
 upon the state of facts which are now before the Committee, that, 
 
40 
 
 not only will the construction of the Cambridge system be no 
 cheaper than ours, even if it does not exceed the sum at which 
 ours can be constructed, but also that year by year the annual 
 cost of maintaining it will considerably exceed ours, namely, by 
 the difference between 327,0001. a year on o jr side, and 304,000 l. 
 on theirs. 
 
 •Now, my Lord, passing over the topic of expense—which, 
 after all, must depend mainly upon the question of distance, 
 the second proposition following as a necessary and natural 
 corollary from the first—let us come to the remaining propo¬ 
 sition that I have ventured to submit to the Committee, namely, 
 that the two systems , %f both be carried out, would not be equally 
 advantageous to the piihlie, cither beyond the termini or between 
 the termini, but that the London and York system would 
 afford a more complete accommodation than the Cambridge 
 and Lincoln system, with all those additional branches and all 
 the additional’ mileage suggested by the Board of Trade. The 
 leading object, the Committee will recollect, and which is stated 
 by the Board to be the leading object for local accommodation, 
 is to connect in the most direct manner each of the towns in 
 the district with their great markets, with each other, and the 
 manufacturing districts, and with the shipping ports. Now let 
 us look at this system as a whole, even supposing it to be com¬ 
 pleted in the way which is suggested in the Report. The first 
 act which will strike the eye of every one looking at these two 
 systems as exhibited in the different colours upon the maps 
 upon the table, is this, that whereas the London and York Line 
 passes though or in the immediate outskirts of almost every 
 large town on the line, the Cambridge and Lincoln system will 
 leave almost every one of those towns upon the extremity of a 
 branch. Now I venture humbly to say, subject to the better 
 opinion of the Committee, that alone is a fatal objection to the 
 Cambridge system. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —Did not you make a little mistake ; you gave 
 us yesterday the Bedford and London and Birmingham as one of 
 the gazetted lines. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —So it is, Sir. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —Which line do you mean by that ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —It is omitted from the Board 
 of Trade map, but you will see a Line from Bedford. 
 
 Chairman. —Coming in at Fenny Stratford? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —Yes; it is not marked upon 
 the Board of Trade map, nor is the little branch between our 
 line and Stamford marked upon that map. 
 
 Mr. Darby.—W e know of no such Bill. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangiiam. —It is gazetted by the Board 
 of Trade ; it is contained in the Ecport which I am commenting 
 
 Mr. Darby. —It is not before this Committee. 
 
41 
 
 ' Mb. Serjeant Wraxgham —No, it is elsewhere; it is an 
 ingredient in the calculations for this Bedfordshire district, which 
 is not necessary under our system, but absolutely essential under 
 theirs: there is a map which has been prepared which contains 
 nothing but the lines recommended by the Board of Trade. 
 
 [Handing the same to the Committee.'] 
 
 Honourable members will see in a moment that it by no 
 means follows, that because the Board of Trade recommends 
 such lines, and mentions such lines in their Report as component 
 parts of the Cambridge and Lincoln system, they should have 
 been sent before this Committee. It is the ease with the Bed¬ 
 ford Branch, and with the Syston and Peterborough Line; 12 
 miles of which is necessary to their system to give Stamford a 
 southern communication at all, or any thing but a most circui¬ 
 tous one. The great distinction, as I was stating to the Com¬ 
 mittee, between their system and ours is, that whereas ours 
 serves the towns of the district by a trunk line, theirs serves the 
 same towns by branches. I do not mean to say that that is to 
 be taken without any qualification: they do serve certain towns 
 by the trunk, but they serve a very few—I think four only, 
 namely, St. Ives, Peterborough, Lincoln, and Gainsborough. 
 Those are the only towns of any sort of consequence which they 
 put upon the Trunk Railway. 
 
 Chairman. —Cambridge ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgiiam. —That they start from. 
 
 Chairman. —It is on the trunk. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Whang iiam. —So is London on ours. 
 
 Mr. Darby. —Cambridge is stated to be of great importance. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wraxgham. —It is so stated, but—it may be 
 from the circumstance, that having had the fortune or the misfor¬ 
 tune, with the noble Lord in the chair, of having had my educa¬ 
 tion at a different university, I may be prejudiced on the subject— 
 I do not attach so much importance to Cambridge. Let me dis¬ 
 pose of the Cambridge question before I proceed. There is 
 before the Committee a Bill for a line from Cambridge to Hun¬ 
 tingdon. To that Bill, I took occasion on the first day to 
 acquaint the Committee, we offered no opposition whatever; 
 on the contrary we should be too glad to see it made, and, 
 to use a very vulgar expression, I wish we may get it. I strongly 
 believe that it is not intended to be pressed upon the attention 
 of the Committee. That Bill, if it be passed, will give Cam¬ 
 bridge a direct Northern communication by the London and 
 York Line, joining the London and York Line at Huntingdon. 
 They will get a direct Northern communication more direct, cer¬ 
 tainly quite as direct, by the London and York Line as they can 
 get by the Cambridge and Lincoln Line, and they will retain 
 their Southern communication by the existing roads. 
 
 I will go further and say, that not only do we not oppose, 
 but rather promote the Cambridge and Huntingdon Line; but we 
 
42 
 
 are ready, if the Cambridge and Huntingdon promoters drop 
 that Bill, to engage ourselves to be the parties who shall make 
 it; and do not let it be said that this promise is a bid to catch 
 a favourable decision from the Committee. 
 
 It is months ago since the resolution was recorded upon the 
 books of our provisional Committee, that we should either pro¬ 
 mote that line which is now before Parliament; or, if the parties 
 interested in it declined to make it, we should ourselves under¬ 
 take its construction. 
 
 Mb. Poulett Scbope. —You add that to your 327 miles ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Not at present, Sir. At the 
 same time, I should not be afraid to make the addition. I am 
 quite ready to add that, if the Committee will consider it as 
 made and placed in our hands, and am ready to add sixteen ox- 
 seventeen miles of the most level road to be found in any part of 
 the kingdom. I have heard, though I am not so well acquainted 
 with those localities as with others lying in a more -westerly 
 direction, that the district is so level, as always to be selected 
 for trotting matches and matters of that kind. It is the very 
 cheapest line, and I have no doubt it is a line the traffic of 
 which will amply pay for the construction, and therefore balanc¬ 
 ing the account, I have no objection to the addition which the 
 honourable member suggests. The estimate is only 90001. a 
 mile. 
 
 I proceed. St. Ives, Peterborough, Lincoln, and Gains¬ 
 borough, are the only four towns which they serve with a trunk 
 
 What are the towns we serve ? We serve every town with a 
 trunk line that I have named except St. Ives; and St. Ives—if 
 the honourable member’s suggestion is to be' incorporated in our 
 scheme, and the Cambridge and Huntingdon Line placed in our 
 possession—will be transferred from them to us; but, taking 
 the system as it stands now, with the exception of St. Ives, we 
 serve all the towns they do by the trunk line, and in addition, 
 we serve those towns by a trunk line which they serve by 
 branches. 
 
 We serve by trimk line, Selby, Doncaster, Bawtry, Retford, 
 Newark, Grantham, Petei’borough, Huntingdon, St. Neots, Big¬ 
 gleswade, Hitchin, Gainsborough, Lincoln, Boston, Spalding. 
 
 Chairman. —Barnet ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —We do not go through Bar- 
 net ; we pass in the immediate neighbourhood. I shall have a 
 word or two to say on that subject. 
 
 Now, is this or not a light matter, putting the large towns— 
 I may say almost all the towns of the district, upon branches ? 
 I would always use other persons’ language rather than my own, 
 because it is likely to be very much better. Will you permit 
 me for a moment to occupy the attention of the Committee, by 
 reading the opinion of the Board of Trade upon this question, of 
 
43 
 
 putting towns upon branches instead of carrying a trunk line 
 through them ? They say, “ The delay, inconvenience, and expense 
 (hat residt from placing important tow ns on short branches, or giving 
 them stations too distant for ready access, are matters of universal 
 complaint wherever they have been experienced; and a large propor¬ 
 tion of the Railway Bills of the present Session result from the efforts 
 of such towns to place themselves upon through lines of communication. 
 •In one remarkable instance the Birmingham and Gloucester 
 Company now propose to abandon several miles of their existing 
 lines, in order to remedy, at a great expense, the error formerly 
 committed in leaving Worcester and Droitwich at a short distance 
 from the Railway.” 
 
 It is impossible for me to add to what the Board themselves 
 state, as to the great inconvenience of adopting this branch sys¬ 
 tem, of putting neighbouring towns upon branches instead of the 
 main line. Just let the Committee, for a moment, look at the 
 map, and suppose that being at one of those towns it was an 
 object with them to pass to its neighbour. Between many of 
 these towns of great importance, all of them the markets of the 
 rich surrounding districts, there is a very considerable intercourse, 
 as will be proved to the Committee by the number of passengers 
 who are proved annually to pass from one to another. 
 
 Let honourable members for a moment suppose themselves, 
 for instance, at Boston. 
 
 There is a very great communication between Boston and 
 Spalding, the neighbouring town. They are anxious to go from 
 Boston to Spalding; the present distance is about thirteen miles 
 by the road; if our line were made they would pass at once by a 
 direct Railway line. How are they to get to Spalding by the 
 line suggested by the Board of Trade? They must first of all 
 pass along the branch to Heckington to join the main line of the 
 Cambridge and Lincoln; then they must pass down that main 
 line; then they must turn upon the branch to Spalding. There 
 are two changes of trains here; the portmanteau is left at one, 
 the umbrella at another; and the passenger arrives with the 
 greatest possible delay, having traversed twice the distance which 
 was necessary, and having spent the whole morning in reaching 
 his destination when he might have been conveyed in the anta¬ 
 gonist system of Railways in a few minutes, certainly in the 
 space of half an horn. Take the case of Grantham; between 
 Grantham and Stamford there is a considerable intercourse. 
 How is a Grantham traveller, who wishes to get to Stamford, 
 to reach it by Railway? By our scheme he passes direct upon 
 the main line. 
 
 Chairman. —Not quite to Stamford. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —He must pass down by the 
 direct line, and then by a short branch to Stamford. How is he 
 to set about it by the Board of Trade’s lines to Stamford? 
 It is not merely the additional distance he would have to 
 
44 
 
 travel, though that is a grievous inconvenience and a very 
 great charge, but the real practical inconvenience, such as to 
 amount almost to a prohibition, is the frequent change of train, 
 and the frequent delays in being set down by one train and 
 having to wait for another train to come up. He must go 
 six miles away from Stamford in a northerly direction. He 
 must travel along that Grantham Branch six miles, then he 
 gets upon another branch, the Heckington and Newark Branch, 
 turns to the right after he has gone sLx miles and waited a suffi¬ 
 cient time at the corner; he is then taken'upon that Sleaford 
 Extension, as the Board calls it, of the Sheffield and Newark Line 
 till he meets the main line of the Cambridge and Lincoln, there 
 he stops again; then he has to come down that main line till he 
 crosses the Stamford and Spalding Branch; then he has to get 
 out again and to get into his carriage, and be conveyed along the 
 branch to Stamford; there are four changes of carriage between 
 these two places. In travelling by our Railway he would have 
 one change of carriage at the point where the branch diverges, 
 but recollect, in our case both would be under the same 
 management, preventing unnecessary delay in passing from the 
 main line to the Stamford Branch. How is it on the other 
 line ? First, the Grantham Branch is to be under whose con¬ 
 trol ? We know not. The Newark and Sheffield is an inde¬ 
 pendent Company. Between Newark and Sleaford they would 
 be upon the Newark and Sheffield Company; when they get to 
 Heckington, they would be upon the territory of the Cambridge 
 and Lincoln; they will then continue under the control of the 
 Cambridge and Lincoln, first of all, along the main line, till 
 they are landed at Stamford. It is impossible for me to enu¬ 
 merate or for the Committee to overrate the amount of the 
 inconvenience, which must necessarily be encountered by the 
 travellers from one town to another, who have to make such a 
 devious course as this, to be constantly interrupted by coining 
 to the end of a branoli, then passing upon the main line for 
 a short distance, then upon one branch and then upon another, 
 necessarily delayed at each place, with the means of commu¬ 
 nication, as a matter of course, less frequent—because trains 
 never run upon branches so frequently as, for the purpose of a 
 great traffic, they run upon a trunk line. 
 
 With the certainty of having fewer trains, and a great risk 
 of incurring delay (infinitely of more consequence than any cost) 
 from the want of frequent communication, such as I have 
 described; if that system be carried out, what is recommended 
 by the Board of Trade, viz., the giving to each of those towns a 
 ready access to each other, is utterly lost sight of, and the dis¬ 
 tance between those towns is in many cases doubled; in some 
 instances increased in a still greater ratio, as compared with the 
 present means the parties enjoy, and which, in all human pro- 
 
45 
 
 bability, they would continue to resort to if they have no better 
 Railway accommodation than that offered by the Cambridge 
 system. 
 
 Now, my Lord, is that amount of inconvenience, which is great 
 in each individual case, a matter of little consequence in the 
 aggregate ? Are there but few persons likely to be exposed to it? 
 
 I do not mean to say, that if there were only a few hundred 
 people likely to be passing in the course of a year, the sending 
 them round about would be of so much consequence. Between 
 Stamford and Grantham there are passengers in the course of the 
 year amounting to nearly 50,000. The inconvenience, therefore, 
 considerable in each individual instance, becomes intolerable in 
 the aggregate, and the result inevitably would be (as the Board 
 of Trade states it has in similar cases been) that, supposing the 
 Cambridge and Lincoln to be carried out, then those great towns 
 would never rest till they had accomplished a direct Railway 
 communication between each other, that is, till, in addition to 
 the Cambridge system, they have carried out the London and 
 York system also. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —What is the distance between Grantham 
 and Stamford ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —I think 21 miles, Sir; it is 27 
 miles by our rail, it would be 47 by the Cambridge system. 
 
 Mr. Baring Wall. —You have stated 13 miles by rail 
 between Boston and Spalding; by the Cambridge system what 
 would it be ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —23 miles. I have mentioned 
 the number of passengers between Grantham and Stamford. 
 Now to show the Committee that I was -well founded in the 
 remark I made, that the intercourse between Boston and Spalding 
 was very great, it is right I should state to the Committee that 
 the passengers passing between Spalding and Boston in a year 
 are nearly 110,000. 
 
 Now, I am anxious not to detain the Committee by going into 
 the case of each of those towns. 
 
 Chairman. —We shall hear of it I suppose. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Yes, my Lord; but I would 
 venture to comprise in a general observation the substance of 
 what will be proved in each individual case in evidence: that with 
 respect to the majority of those towns, the adoption of the 
 Cambridge and Lincoln system, which is a system of placing 
 those towns upon branches, greatly, in all those cases, increases 
 the distance to be traversed, either between the particular town 
 and its neighbourhood, or between the particular town and 
 London; that it involves in all those cases additional changes of 
 carriage, additional waiting for this train and that train and the 
 other train; in short, that so far as they are concerned, they 
 are practically excluded from, instead of being admitted into, 
 the beneiits of Railway communication. 
 
4G 
 
 There are some districts, however, which, according to the 
 system to which I am opposed, are altogether left out of con¬ 
 sideration, and this brings me to that part of the case which 
 excites the most vehement opposition to the London and York 
 scheme, namely, the trunk line from London to Huntingdon. 
 The Board of Trade object to a new trunk line from London to 
 Huntingdon, they say it is too expensive, and that the country 
 does not require it. Nay, they go as far as to say that this 
 Biggleswade Branch, and the extensions which they take upon 
 themselves to suggest—it is a matter of doubt whether even those 
 null not be too costly for the wants of the country. What 
 are the wants of the country ? Because upon this matter de¬ 
 pends whether or not we are justified in incurring the expense 
 we do incur for the accommodation of that part of the country 
 only. 
 
 Let honourable members recollect that we hold it to be of 
 the first importance, with a view to all the remainder of the dis¬ 
 trict, and to the country beyond the Northern terminus, but of 
 course, in the first instance, for the benefit of this district, that 
 we should have an independent trunk line all the way between 
 London and York. 
 
 I hold in my hand a little diagram of the country thirty-three 
 miles round London, which shows, by measurement of the circle, 
 that the district which lies between us and the London and Bir¬ 
 mingham on the one side, and the Northern and Eastern on the 
 other, is just about the same width as the distance between the 
 London and Birmingham and the Great Western, and between 
 the Southern and Eastern and the Eastern Counties, and between 
 the Great Western and the South-Western; that is to say, the 
 whole space north of the Thames, taking a circuit of thirty-three 
 miles from London, would be divided into pretty nearly equal 
 proportions by the different Railways which radiate from London 
 towards the North, supposing our Railway to be made. 
 
 Chairman. —Taking the Northern and Eastern as one 
 boundary and the South-Western as the other? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Taking the Thames east and 
 west, the district north of the Thames will be found to be inter¬ 
 sected by radii pretty nearly equidistant from each other. 
 
 The population of the district with which I am dealing south 
 of Huntingdon is no less than 200,000. 
 
 The area is upwards of 547,000 acres. 
 
 It has no water communication to London whatever, except 
 by the way of Lynn, if that can be called a communication to 
 London. The Committee will be prepared, under such a state 
 of circumstances, to find that this district has retrograded and 
 suffered, while by the construction of Railways other districts, 
 locally more remote, have been approximated to the great metro¬ 
 polis. 
 
 The fact is so; and unless Railway comm 
 
 mnication be afforded 
 
47 
 
 which shall give them access to London and to the manufacturing 
 districts, it must continue to retrograde. 
 
 Chairman. —What is the distance from Huntingdon to 
 London ? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —59 miles by ours. 
 
 Such being the population and extent of the district, and the 
 present most imperfect means of getting rid of their surplus pro¬ 
 duce, let me for a moment detain the Committee by stating 
 -what that surplus produce amounts to, or rather what the saving 
 to them by an improved communication will amount to. 
 
 I shall be in a condition to shew the Committee, without 
 going into particular details now, that they export, taking every 
 description of grain, corn, and the partially-manufactured article 
 flour and malt—(I include under the head of corn, grain of all 
 descriptions)—about 390,000 quarters, at an expense of about 
 GS,0002. a year. 
 
 I shall also shew the Committee that, by the introduction of 
 our ltailway, we can convey that produce to market at a cost 
 only of 21,000Z., making a saving of 47,0002. a year out of the 
 08,0002. I shall shew the Committee that, in consequence of 
 the difficulty and dearness of the transit to market, only half, 
 certainly not more than half, of the mill power and malting 
 power of the district is called into operation, the other half 
 being thrown out of it from the impossibility of getting the flour 
 and malt conveyed to market. 
 
 At one particular part of it, in the neighbourhood of Biggles¬ 
 wade, I have already stated to the Committee the particular 
 nature of the produce—garden produce. The garden produce 
 of Biggleswade, which is all sent away of course, amounts to 
 20,000 tons a year. 
 
 Of this, about 15,000 tons are sent to London, and about 
 5000 tons to the North. That which goes to London goes by 
 land carriage, at an expanse of 30s. a ton. We should carry it 
 for 7s., and they would have a saving of 20s. upon every ton. 
 
 The other 5000 tons, which goes to the North, is carried at 
 no less than 52s. 6(2. a ton at present. We should carry it for 
 21s. 8(2., making a saving of 30s. 10(2. a ton.; that is, an average 
 saving upon the whole of 20s. a ton, and of course, therefore, I need 
 not say it would be a saving to the district in the carriage of 
 their cabbages and different vegetables of no less than 20,0002. 
 a year. Was I wrong then in stating? Was there anything 
 improper in the statement, which 1 will verify by evidence, that 
 in the opinion of those best acquainted with the capabilities of 
 that Biggleswade district, the present amount of produce of 
 120,0002. worth in the year will be doubled when the Railway 
 shall call it into operation. 
 
 In addition to this, Huntingdonshire and the district of which 
 I am now speaking, receive their imports from the manufacturing 
 districts by London, and by land carriage. 
 
48 
 
 The charge of every ton of such manufactured goods to the 
 tradesmen in this district who receive them from the North is 31. 
 .or 41. a ton, according to the nature of the article. We should 
 reduce the cost fully one-half. 
 
 The Committee will he surprised to hear that the quantity 
 of tons of manufactured goods that are imported into this district 
 amount, according to the established mode of Railway calculation, 
 to 2,000,000 tons carried 1 mile, that is to say, taking the average 
 number of miles which they would have to travel to reach the 
 point of destination it w'ould amount to the same thing in money 
 as the 2,000,000 tons carried a single mile. 
 
 That would give, by reducing the price upon the carriage 
 four-fifths, an annual saving of more than 42,0001. 
 
 Chairman. —Do you mean that all those tons at present 
 coming from the district of which you arc speaking would not 
 come by the London and Birmingham Railway? 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Wrangham. —Exactly so. It is not for me 
 to say that if the Bedford Branch were made to the London and 
 Birmingham Line, and those other extensions not carried out 
 through the district, some portion of them might not come by 
 the circuitous route of the Midland or Grand Junction Railway, 
 and down to Bletchley and back again to Bedford, but there would 
 be nothing like the direct communication that we should give. 
 
 I have already stated to the Committee how 7 we propose to 
 carry, as return carriage for coal to London and at a very cheap 
 rate, the London stable and other manure, which can be procured 
 in the greatest abundance. 
 
 I pass over that with this remark that the want of manure is 
 the great want in this garden district of all others. 
 
 Then we come to the coals. This district, I may venture to 
 say, is of all others the one most destitute of this most necessary 
 article. It is in this district that all sorts of fuel are had 
 recourse to, that can exempt the people from paying the extra¬ 
 vagant price of coal. The average saving in the price of coal 
 per ton by the Railway, as it is brought direct from the North to 
 this district, will amount to more than 12j. G d., making upon a 
 population of 200,000 people a difference of 125,0001. Adding 
 together these heads of saving which I have given to the 
 Committee, and adding also the saving on the passenger traflic, 
 the saving which I had stated to the Committee yesterday 
 would be effected upon the whole district; giving credit for 
 a quarter of that saving to this district, that would be a sum 
 of 02,0001., which, added to the different sums I have stated, 
 amounts to no less than an aggregate saving to this district of 
 300,0001. a year. Then I say that this district is eminently 
 entitled to have whatever benefit the Railway can afford, and I 
 say more, that we shall give them that benefit at as cheap a rate 
 and in a degree far more complete than it can be pretended the 
 Cambridge system would afford it, because we shall give them 
 
49 
 
 that accommodation by a Railway which for nearly 39 out of the 
 59 miles from London runs parallel mile by mile with the line 
 suggested by the Board of Trade, and which certainty, therefore, 
 may be taken as no more costly than that recommended by the 
 Board. All the remaining 20 miles into London which we have 
 to make, would, upon the Board’s own estimates, be made for 
 800,000?., equal to 40,000?. per mile; and I have shown the Com¬ 
 mittee that the same sum, upon their own estimate, must be laid 
 out for completing the Cambridge Line by the Farringdon Street 
 Extension; so that the two sums are equal as far as Huntingdon, 
 and then there is to be added to this, the Bedford Branch to the 
 London and Birmingham, an additional 125,000?. to be put into 
 the balance in this scale. 
 
 Now a single word about the southern part of that district. 
 That southern part of the district, the 20 miles south of 
 Welwyn, is not pretended to be in any way accommodated by the 
 Board of Trade Line. I advert to it only for a moment, from 
 the circumstance that some have spoken of the country with 
 Barnet in its centre, as not being of a nature to be eminently 
 deserving of Railway accommodation; I do not know how that 
 is, but I think the opinion, if it were maintained, will be changed 
 when I remind the Committee that this district of which I am 
 now speaking, south of Welwyn, contains a population of 52,000 
 persons, and contains, besides the town of Barnet, the towns of 
 Hatfield and Welwyn, and that it has no possible means of com¬ 
 munication anywhere, except by wagaon and the road. Then. 
 I say, if the question depended merely upon the local claim of 
 this district south of Huntingdon to a Railway, an ample case of 
 public benefit is made out for constructing a new trunk line from 
 London through that district. But I will take leave to remind 
 the Committee also that if they have a case for a Railway of 
 their own, the case for a trunk line is immensely strengthened 
 by the consideration that it is also of the greatest importance 
 to the whole of the district lying northward; and that many of the 
 benefits we hope to confer, are dependent upon the circumstance 
 that we possess an independent trunk line throughout, from the 
 terminus at York to the terminus at London ; a line shorter by 
 nine or ten miles than any other which has been proposed, and 
 which gives an accommodation in its course more complete than 
 the other system offers, and accommodation to many districts 
 which the other does not accommodate at all. 
 
 There is another district which we accommodate, which is 
 entirely omitted from the scheme of the Board of Trade; there 
 is a district towards the northern portion of our line, which cir¬ 
 cumstances have rendered well known, the Hundred of Basset- 
 law ; a rich and fertile agricultural district. It contains 44,000 
 inhabitants, and 191,541 acres of land. The population of this 
 district has been cruelty miscalculated by those advising the 
 Board of Trade; they have looked to towns only, and thought 
 
where they met with a town containing only 3000 inhabitants, 
 that the district of which the town is the centre does not deserve 
 Railway communication; now, in that part of the country, people 
 do not collect in towns, as they do here. The population is 
 more equally spread over the surface of the land; and though 
 you niay create a smile by talking of Tuxford requiring Railway 
 accommodation, with perhaps not more than 1000 inhabitants, 
 that is no reason for excluding the whole district in which Tux¬ 
 ford is found, which contains 44,000 inhabitants, and which is 
 omitted from their system, and supplied only by our own. 
 
 There is also the town of East Retford, of which by some 
 mistake the Board of Trade put the population at 2G00, when 
 it contains between 3000 and 6000 inhabitants, they being misled 
 apparently by the name, there being a limited parish of East 
 Retford, but the town consists of East Retford, West Retford, 
 Clarborough, and Ordsall, and these make an aggregate of 6460. 
 
 Taking the whole produce of every description which is 
 raised in that Hunched of Bassetlaw, it will be proved to the 
 satisfaction of the Committee, that the value is very little under 
 1,000,0001. annually, and that the saving to them in the price of 
 conveyance by the introduction of the Railway, as compared 
 with the present modes of communication, is no less than, taking 
 the present cost at 31,9001., and the Railway cost at 92001., a 
 difference of 22,7001. That the Committee will understand is 
 the amount of the annual saving to this district, without speaking 
 at all on the subject of the saving in the carriage of passen¬ 
 gers ; it is merely the goods traffic. 
 
 Am I wrong in saying that the Cambridge system of com¬ 
 munication, (though more lengthy, and, to say the least of it, as 
 costly as ours,) by no means equals ours in its efficiency when 
 completed, whether you look to the perfect nature of the com¬ 
 munication where it is conferred by either system, or the 
 omission of whole districts such as these from the Cambridge 
 system, which are amply and admirably supplied by ours? 
 
 I might carry the Committee through many portions of the 
 line, and institute similar comparisons, but, at whatever risk of 
 omitting from the statement I am making to the Committee 
 material points for them consideration, I feel it is time that I 
 should abstain. I will therefore willingly leave to the gradual 
 evolution of the evidence which is to be adduced before you, 
 those other points of contrast, which under other circumstances, 
 and if the time had permitted, I should have been anxious to 
 introduce into the statement. 
 
 One great feature, be it remembered throughout, distin¬ 
 guishes our system from theirs; that our system, being the more 
 complete, is also rendered additionally efficient by being through¬ 
 out under one single management. 
 
 There can be no conflict of interests; there can be no struggle 
 on the part of our Company to divert the traffic in the direction 
 
the most profitable to themselves, and prevent its passing in its 
 natural course; where it would quit their territory and enter that 
 of a Company independent, and perhaps antagonist to their 
 own. Nothing but the wants of the population and the natural 
 course of the traffic would have to be studied by us, to whom 
 it could make no difference in what direction, within the district, 
 the traffic was conveyed. Is that the case with the lines sug¬ 
 gested by the Board of Trade? No less than eight independent 
 Companies are introduced into the district, all of them with independent 
 interests, many of them with interests conflicting with each other and with 
 the wants of the district; no less than eight Companies are presented by 
 branches in this patchicork system of bit by bit Railway communication. 
 There are the London and Birmingham and Bedford Branch, the 
 Eastern Counties, Ely and Bedford, the Cambridge and Lincoln, the 
 Newark and Sheffield, by which I do not mean the line from 
 New'ark to Sheffield, I have no objection to that line,—it was 
 orurmally designed to communicate with the London and York, 
 —but its extension through Sleaford and Heckington to Boston. 
 The Direct Northern, the Midland Counties, by the Swinton Ex¬ 
 tension, and the Company from Wakefield to Goole, so far as 
 the interval between Wakefield and Snaith is concerned. I 
 was about to add the Tottenham and Farringdon Street Ex¬ 
 tension, which would make a ninth; but that I believe is to 
 be the production of three of the Companies which I have 
 already named, the joint progeny of three of those Compa¬ 
 nies, and therefore, probably it may be considered as embodied 
 in the persons of the three parents from whose loins it lias 
 sprung. Is it a matter of trifling consequence that those various 
 Companies should be all exercising an influence in some part or 
 other of this district, when many of them have interests so ob¬ 
 viously conflicting with each other? I will not go through the 
 hypothetical cases, which one might put without number, as to 
 the consequences of such a conflict; but as an illustration, what 
 can be clearer than that the Midland Railway Company, for 
 instance, must have every interest hi the world in preventing the 
 traffic from finding its w r ay into the system of the Eastern Railway; 
 and, in as far as its powers will permit, to confine it to its present 
 route, the Midland Lines through Derby? 
 
 Then have I laid the ground—for my office is only to at¬ 
 tempt to lay the ground, for the witnesses will supply the 
 superstructure,—have I succeeded in laying the ground upon 
 which the evidence shall rear the three propositions that I ven¬ 
 ture to lay down to the Committee, first, that more miles will be 
 required of new Railway for the Cambridge and Lincoln system than for 
 ours; secondly, that the cost of ourswillnot exceed theirs; and, thirdly, 
 that so balanced in cost, and so exceeding in point of distance, the Cam¬ 
 bridge system when constructed—L can hardly use the word completed — 
 will not offer anything like the amount of the pvMie accommodation which 
 the London and York will supply? 
 
I trust that the Committee will be of opinion, that when they 
 are considering the mode of supplying this new element, I will 
 not call it of luxury, but of first necessity to a vast population 
 hitherto excluded from it; and when they are considering how 
 this large amount of capital can best be applied for the public 
 benefit, they will favour that system which is complete in itself— 
 which is placed under one regular system of management—which 
 has no conflicting interest to disturb it or to diminish its utility 
 —which, to use the language of the Board of Trade, offers the 
 more comprehensive system of accommodation. And that the Com¬ 
 mittee will not let seven or eight millions of money, or whatever 
 the amount, be frittered away in those little branches—those 
 little expedients contrived to supply the deficiencies of the 
 original plan, as they began to transpire one after the other— 
 but rather adopt a great and comprehensive scheme, which, 
 issuing from the metropolis at the one end, traverses, as a great 
 trunk line, the intermediate district, and at the other in various 
 points penetrates the wealthy district of the North; piercing the 
 Durham coal field with the aid of the Great North of England 
 Railway, and entering into that hive of manufacturing industry, 
 and that hoard of mineral wealth, the West Riding of Yorkshire, 
 and the districts of Lancashire adjacent to it, and bringing the 
 produce of those districts, grasped by the fingers which arc 
 extended over it on the map before you, in one great stream upon 
 its main trunk line; and then, as it passes in its course through 
 the markets and the main towns' of the district, distributing to 
 each the manufactures and the minerals which it has collected in 
 the North, taking from each on its return that agricultural pro¬ 
 duce, in which alone they are rich, and the North and South alone 
 are poor. 
 
 My Lord, if you shall, as I trust, at the close of this long- 
 inquiry, for long I fear it must be, accede to the prayer of 
 those promoting the Bill before the Committee, you will have the 
 satisfaction, no trifling one, in addition to the feeling which under 
 any circumstances anti whatever is your decision would be yours, 
 of having acted to the best of your judgment—you will have the 
 satisfaction also of having gratified the wishes of the population 
 mainly interested. I believe that there are few subjects, whether 
 in politics, or in political economy, or any matters of rural 
 statistics, in which all parties have been more cordially united in 
 this district than in the desire to possess the railway of which I 
 am the very incompetent advocate. When the Board of Trade’s 
 decision transpired, throughout the length and breadth of this 
 district a feeling akin to consternation was created among the 
 population. Public meetings were assembled in every direction, 
 and petitions were voted at those public meetings to the two 
 Houses of Parliament, A sight seldom witnessed, certainly itself 
 without a precedent, a County Meeting, crowded in the Castle 
 Yard, at Lincoln, under the auspices of the Sheriff of the County, 
 
53 
 
 petitioned the Legislature on our behalf. Meetings have been 
 held in all the principal towns of the district. Petitions have 
 been presented to the House, not merely from those meetings 
 of a popular character, but also from the different Corporations 
 within the district, all complaining of the decision of the Board 
 of Trade as likely to be most injurious, and many stating their 
 apprehensions that it would be ruinous to them if adopted, and 
 appealing from this decision to the decision of the tribunal 
 which I am now' addressing. 
 
 In making that appeal, they urge upon your notice the fact, 
 that the Board of Trade was ■without those means which you for¬ 
 tunately possess of testing the truth of the representations made 
 to them, and w r ere obliged, from the necessity of the case, to 
 adopt the statements and memorials w'hich very frequently per¬ 
 haps may have had little foundation except the imagination of 
 then- authors. You liow'ever are furnished with other and better 
 means of inquiry; you can determine the truth or falsehood of 
 the representations that have been offered unchallenged to the 
 Board of Trade; with you that decision will rest. To you I 
 (having done my duty so far as opening the case to the Com¬ 
 mittee is concerned) commit it; confident that you will pay to 
 the evidence what it w ell deserves, the attention you have been 
 kind enough to bestow upon these observations and which they 
 so little merit; and believing that, when you shall have heard that 
 evidence to its close, you will be under the impression which is 
 strongly stamped upon my mind that there is but one course to 
 adopt with respect to these conflicting schemes before you; 
 namely, that of adopting the one single and, so to say, complete 
 system, instead of the other incomplete system, as expensive, more 
 lengthy, and at the same time omitting many of the most im¬ 
 portant parts of the district which it affects to accommodate. My 
 Lord, we shall proceed, with your Lordship’s leave, to call the wit¬ 
 nesses, who, I trust, will satisfy the Committee of the necessity of 
 making a Hallway in the way which I have endeavoured, very ineffi¬ 
 ciently, to lay before the Committee. My learned friends will then 
 have an opportunity, by those means which are placed in their 
 hands, of testing the statements which I have been making, and 
 I invite them, by every legitimate means in their power, and I am 
 sure they will use no other means, to test those statements, for 
 I feel they can bear the test, and that the more they are inquired 
 into, the more their truth will appear. 
 
 Captain Strong examined. 
 
 (Vide Minutes of Evidence.) 
 
 Adjourned to To-morrow at Twelve o’clock.