st that Parliament will, in all railways it may sanction,
limit the speed to _eight or nine miles an hour_, which we entirely agree
with Mr. Sylvestor is as great as can be ventured on with safety."

PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION.

On the third reading of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill in the
House of Commons, The Hon. Edward Stanley moved that the bill be read
that day six months, assigning, among other reasons, that the railway
trains worked by horses would take ten hours to do the distance, and that
they could not be worked by locomotive engines. Sir Isaac Coffin
seconded the motion, indignantly denouncing the project as fraught with
fraud and imposition. He would not consent to see widows' premises
invaded, and "how," he asked, "would any person like to have a railroad
under his parlour window? . . . What, he would like to know, was to be
done with all those who had advanced money in making and repairing
turnpike-roads? What with those who may still wish to travel in their
own or hired carriages, after the fashion of their forefathers? What was
to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen,
innkeepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the House aware of
the smoke and noise, the hiss and whirl, which locomotive engines,
passing at the rate of ten or twelve miles an hour, would occasion?
Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows
could behold them without dismay. . . . Iron would be raised in price
100 per cent., or, more probably, exhausted altogether! It would be the
greatest nuisance, the most complete disturbance of quiet and comfort in
all parts of the kingdom, that the ingenuity of man could invent!"

SPEED OF RAILWAY ENGINES.

At the present day it is amusing to read the speeches of the counsel
employed against an act of Parliament being passed in favour of the
railway between Liverpool and Manchester. Mr. Harrison, who appeared on
behalf of certain landowners against the scheme, thus spoke with regard
to the powers of the locomotive engine:--"When we set out with the
original prospectus--I am sorry I have not got the paper with me--we were
to gallop, I know not at what rate, I believe it was at the rate of
twelve miles an hour. My learned friend, Mr. Adam, contemplated,
possibly in alluding to Ireland, that some of the Irish members would
arrive in wagons to a division. My learned friend says, that they would
go at t