gular system, but have sprung, like their constitution, their laws, and
their entire industrial arrangements, from the force of circumstances and
the individual energies of the people.

The mode of action in the case of railway extension, was characteristic
and national. The execution of the new lines was undertaken entirely by
joint-stock associations of proprietors, after the manner of the Stockton
and Darlington, and Liverpool and Manchester companies. These
associations are conformable to our national habits, and fit well into
our system of laws. They combine the power of vast resources with
individual watchfulness and motives of self-interest; and by their means
gigantic undertakings, which otherwise would be impossible to any but
kings and emperors with great national resources at command, were carried
out by the co-operation of private persons. And the results of this
combination of means and of enterprise have been truly marvellous.
Within the life of the present generation, the private citizens of
England engaged in railway extension have, in the face of Government
obstructions, and without taking a penny from the public purse, executed
a system of communications involving works of the most gigantic kind,
which, in their total mass, their cost, and their public utility, far
exceed the most famous national undertakings of any age or country.

Mr. Stephenson was of course, actively engaged in the construction of the
numerous railways now projected by the joint-stock companies. The desire
for railway extension principally pervaded the manufacturing districts,
especially after the successful opening of the Liverpool and Manchester
line. The commercial classes of the larger towns soon became eager for a
participation in the good which they had so recently derided. Railway
projects were set on foot in great numbers, and Manchester became a
centre from which main lines and branches were started in all directions.
The interest, however, which attaches to these later schemes is of a much
less absorbing kind than that which belongs to the earlier history of the
railway and the steps by which it was mainly established. We naturally
sympathise more keenly with the early struggles of a great principle, its
trials and its difficulties, than with its after stages of success; and,
however gratified and astonished we may be at its consequences, the
interest is in a great measure gone when its triumph has become a matter