capable of making one.
His is a mind perpetually fluctuating between opposite difficulties: he
neither knows whether he is to make bridges over roads or rivers, of one
size or of another; or to make embankments, or cuttings, or inclined
planes, or in what way the thing is to be carried into effect. Whenever
a difficulty is pressed, as in the case of a tunnel, he gets out of it at
one end, and when you try to catch him at that, he gets out at the
other." Mr. Alderson proceeded to declaim against the gross ignorance of
this so-called engineer, who proposed to make "impossible ditches by the
side of an impossible railway" upon Chat Moss; "I care not," he said,
"whether Mr. Giles is right or wrong in his estimate, for whether it be
effected by means of piers raised up all the way for four miles through
Chat Moss, whether they are to support it on beams of wood or by erecting
masonry, or whether Mr. Giles shall put a solid bank of earth through
it,--in all these schemes there is not one found like that of Mr.
Stephenson's, namely, to cut impossible drains on the side of this road;
and it is sufficient for me to suggest and to show, that this scheme of
Mr. Stephenson's is impossible or impracticable, and that no other
scheme, if they proceed upon this line, can be suggested which will not
produce enormous expense. I think that has been irrefragably made out.
Every one knows Chat Moss--every one knows that the iron sinks
immediately on its being put upon the surface. I have heard of culverts,
which have been put upon the Moss, which, after having been surveyed the
day before, have the next morning disappeared; and that a house (a poet's
house, who may be supposed in the habit of building castles even in the
air), story after story, as fast as one is added, the lower one sinks!
There is nothing, it appears, except long sedgy grass, and a little soil
to prevent its sinking into the shades of eternal night. I have now
done, sir, with Chat Moss, and there I leave this railroad."

The case of the principal petitioners against the bill occupied many more
days, and on its conclusion the committee proceeded to divide on the
preamble, which was carried by a majority of only _one_--37 voting for
it, and 36 against it. The clauses were next considered, and on a
division the first clause, empowering the Company to make the railway,
was lost by a majority of 19 to 13. In like manner, the next clause,
empowering the Company to take l