Inland Transit/Minutes
Extracts
from
The Minutes of Evidence
given before the
Committee of the Lords
on the
London and Birmingham Railway Bill.
Directors.
London.
- Isaac Solly, Esq. Chairman.
- George Pearkes Barclay, Esq. Deputy Chairman.
- Edmund Calvert, Esq.
- Wm. T. Copeland, Esq. Ald. M.P.
- James Gibson, Esq.
- George Carr Glyn, Esq.
- Pascoe St. Leger Grenfell, Esq.
- Geo. G. Larpent, Esq.
- John George Shaw Lefevre, Esq.
- Sir John Wm. Lubbock, Bart.
- George Lyall, Esq.
- John Lewis Prevost, Esq.
- Henry Rowles, Esq.
- Thomas Tooke, Esq.
- Henry Warre, Esq.
- Alexander Wilson, Esq.
Richard Creed, Esq. Secretary-Office, 69. Cornhill.
Birmingham
- Edmund Peel, Esq. M.P. Chairman.
- John Corrie, Esq. F.R.S. Deputy Chairman.
- George Bacchus, Esq.
- William Francis, Esq.
- William Hawkes, Esq.
- Archibald Kenrick, Esq.
- Joseph Frederick Ledsam, Esq.
- Daniel Ledsam, Esq.
- James Pearson, Esq.
- William Phipson, Esq.
- Theodore Price, Esq.
- Charles Shaw, Esq.
- Timothy Smith, Esq.
- William Hanbury Sparrow, Esq.
- John Sturge, Esq.
- John Turner, Esq.
- Joseph Walker, Esq.
Capt. Constantine Richard Moorsom, R.N. Secretary, Office, Birmingham.
Bankers.
London. Messrs. Glyn, Hallifax, Mills, & Co. Birmingham Messrs. Moilliet, Smith, Pearson, & Moilliet.
The Birmingham Banking Company.
Solicitors.
London Messrs. Tooke & Parker, 39. Bedford Row. Birmingham Messrs. Barker & Son.
Messrs. Corrie & Carter.
Engineers.
"Whereas the making a Railway with proper Works and Conveniences connected therewith, for the Carriage of Passengers. Goods and Merchandise from London to Birmingham, will prove of great public advantage, by opening an additional, cheap, certain, and expeditious Communication between the Metropolis, the Port of London, and the large manufacturing town and neighbourhood of Birmingham; and will at the same time facilitate the means of transit and traffic for Passengers. Goods, and Merchandize, between those places and the adjacent districts and the several intermediate towns and places."
The Preamble to the Act for making a Railway from London to Birmingham, of which the above is a copy, was voted on the 1st of June by a large majority of the Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the Bill was referred. On the 8th of July a majority of the Committee of the House of Lords resolved that the Allegations of the same Preamble had not been proved.
The Directors, in publishing a selection from the evidence which was given before the Committee of the Lords, have proceeded on the conviction that the knowledge of the subject which it is calculated to diffuse will act more powerfully in removing those objections of influential persons which occasioned the loss of the former Bill, than any arguments which could be employed by the advocates of the Railway.
The Directors have confined their extracts exclusively to the evidence given before the Lords' Committees; in the first place, because having been given on oath, it is less diffuse than the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons; and, in the second place, because the Minutes having been printed at length by order of their Lordships, it will be more easy to ascertain, by reference to official documents, the general correctness of the present publication.
Only so much of the evidence has been selected as immediately relates to the following heads:—
First—As to the general utility of the Railway.
Second—As to the estimate of Cost.
Third—As to the Traffic.
Fourth—As to the practical effects of Railways already constructed and in operation.
Although the portion of evidence thus selected is scanty in comparison with the mass which was given in the course of the proceedings on the Bill, the Directors feel confident that it will be sufficient to dissipate the prejudices heretofore entertained against the Railway, and that it will carry the same conviction, as to the general utility of the undertaking, to the minds of others which the original evidence did to the minds of so many of the most distinguished members of the Committees of both Houses; a conviction which induced the noble Chairman of the Committee of the Lords (Lord Wharncliffe) so emphatically to declare at the meeting of Peers. Members of the House of Commons, and other persons favourably disposed to the undertaking, at the Thatched House Tavern, on the 13th of July, at which his Lordship presided—
"He must now say, upon hearing the evidence for the Bill, that he was quite satisfied that this undertaking had the character of a great national measure," and
"That of the many Bills of this description which had come before him in the course of his parliamentary life, he had never seen one passed by either House that was supported by evidence of a more conclusive character."
On this decisive testimony the Directors feel that they might safely rest the case of the Railway; but it is their duty to add that the declaration of the noble Chairman was echoed by the Chairman of the Committee of the Commons, (Sir Gray Skipwith, Bart.) and by every member of the Committees of both Houses present at the meeting, or who has subsequently given the sanction of his name to the resolutions which were then passed.