ds, he had, when
a boy, seen Blenkinsop's locomotive at work on the Middleton cogged
railroad, and from an early period he seems to have entertained almost as
sanguine views on the subject as Sir Richard Phillips. It would appear
that Gray was residing in Brussels in 1816, when the project of a canal
from Charleroi, for the purpose of connecting Holland with the mining
districts of Belgium, was the subject of discussion; and, in conversation
with Mr. John Cockerill and others, he took the opportunity of advocating
the superior advantages of a railway. He was absorbed for some time with
the preparation of a pamphlet on the subject. He shut himself up,
secluded from his wife and relations, declining to give them any
information as to his mysterious studies, beyond the assurance that his
scheme "would revolutionise the whole face of the material world and of
society." In 1820 Mr. Gray published the result of his studies in his
'Observations on a General Iron Railway,' in which, with great cogency,
he urged the superiority of a locomotive railway over common roads and
canals, pointing out, at the same time, the advantages to all classes of
the community of this mode of conveyance for merchandise and persons. In
this book Mr. Gray suggested a railway between Manchester and Liverpool,
"which," he observed, "would employ many thousands of the distressed
population of Lancashire." The treatise must have met with a ready sale,
as we find that two years later it had passed into a fourth edition. In
1822 Mr. Gray added diagrams to the book, showing, in one, suggested
lines of railway connecting the principal towns of England, and in
another, the principal towns of Ireland.

These speculations show that the subject of railways was gradually
becoming familiar to the public mind, and that thoughtful men were
anticipating with confidence the adoption of steam-power for the purposes
of railway traction. At the same time, a still more profitable class of
labourers was at work--first, men like Stephenson, who were engaged in
improving the locomotive and making it a practicable and economical
working power; and next, those like Edward Pease of Darlington, and
Joseph Sandars of Liverpool, who were organising the means of laying down
the railways. Mr. William James, of West Bromwich, belonged to the
active class of projectors. He was a man of considerable social
influence, of an active temperament, and had from an early period take