Stock of the Chester and Holyhead Railway.

443

of the two tubes, with their castings for lifting, weighed 1200 tons, and their height above the level of high water is only 18 feet. The first stone of the abutments was laid on the 15th June 1846. The first tube, begun in March 1847, was floated on the 6th March, and raised in April 1848. The second tube was floated on the 12th, and raised on the 30th October 1848. When the ordinary train passes over the tubes, the deflection is not above 1-8th of an inch.

The BRITANNIA TUBULAR BRIDGE is not yet completed. The central or Britannia tower was begun in May 1846. The tubes were begun the 10th August 1847. The first great tube for the span between the Britannia and Anglesea towers was floated on the 27th June 1849, and was raised between the 1st and 15th October. The second was floated on the 4th December, and the lifting commenced on the 18th. After the third and fourth tubes were raised, and one line of tubes completed, the strength of the bridge was tried on the 5th March 1850. At 6 o'clock in the morning a train with three engines and carriages started from Bangor. It weighed 90 tons, and passed safely through the tube at 7 o'clock at a slow speed. The strength of the bridge was again tried by a train of twentyfour heavy-laden coal waggons. It passed at the rate of about ten miles an hour. Another train of coal was allowed to remain two hours in the centre of the Caermarthenshire tube; and when the load was removed, the deflection was found to be only 4-10ths of an inch. With such evidence of its strength, the final experiment was made at 12 o'clock. A train with three engines, 200 tons of coal, and from thirty to forty carriages, containing from 600 to 700 passengers, passed through in safety, thus exhibiting to the public the perfect security which science and art had achieved for the protection of their lives and their properties. The trains now cross the Strait by this single line of tubes; and we trust it will not be long before the other four tubes are raised and the line completed for the public use.

Such is the fullest description which our limits will permit us to give of the celebrated tubular bridges over the Menai, the most remarkable works that have ever been constructed in any part of the civilized world. The gigantic undertaking of which they form a part, though a railway of only 85 miles, is not yet completed, and its future character as a commercial transaction not yet decided. Its present condition, however, is too well known to the unfortunate shareholders.

The capital was created in 1844 by the issue of 42,000 shares, at £50 each, and in 1847, 42,000 new shares were issued at £15 each, with a preference dividend of 5 per cent., and

with the right of participating with the entire stock in any increased rate of dividend. In July 1850, the £50 shares were selling at £83, and the £15 shares at £9, so that we have

33 6 8

on every £100,

do.

On the original stock, a loss of £72 10 0 On preferential stock, making the loss incurred by the original and preferential shareholders as follows:

Loss incurred by original shareholders,

£1,512,000

252,000

£1,764,000

-that is, a total loss of one million and three quarters of a million of money (!!!) has been sustained by the public-spirited individuals who have executed one of the greatest and most difficult public works that has distinguished any age or nation of the world. We call these individuals public-spirited, although others have branded them with the name of insane speculators and gamblers. It is true that they risked money on a speculation, and that the object of many, if not most of them, was to obtain a large return for the capital which they invested. But there are various kinds of speculations, which must be carefully distinguished from each other. When money is invested in a concern which society does not require-or which is established in a spirit of rivalry with concerns already existing and flourishing,

The following is a more full statement of the Expenditure and Revenue of this Railway :

EXPENDITURE.

Amount received on capital account,
Amount expended to March 1850, half-yearly meeting,

£3,959,033

3,915,382

or which have an evil or a doubtful tendency,-the love of money or of mischief may be fairly regarded as the ruling motive of the proprietary. If, on the other hand, a gas company, a steam-vessel company, or a railway company, are organised in localities where neither gas, nor steamers, nor locomotives, previously existed, the men who give the money for such public works, are, whatever may be their motives, public benefactors, and deserve the encouragement, and support, and sympathy of the public.

But if the company which is established be a truly national one, and accomplishes national objects-and be recognised by the nation as national, and by the public as beneficial, the Speculator rises into a Patriot; and his patriotism is as noble, and perchance as true and disinterested as that of the Prime Minister who rules his country with Fame for his dividend, or of the warrior who defends it for the high preferential rates of ribbons, and titles, and stars. The Chester and Holyhead Railway, with all its expensive and magnificent works, is a national one, and its object has been recognised as national by all the governments that have ruled England during the last fifty years.

The political condition of Ireland rendered it necessary that the most rapid communication should be established between Dublin and London; and with the view of rapidly transporting troops and military stores, as well as from the more benevolent motive of giving the sister island all the advantages of a quick and cheap commercial intercourse with England. The Government has spent enormous sums of the public money in constructing roads, bridges, and harbours to accomplish these important objects. When the line from Crewe to Chester was completed, it then became the duty of the Government to construct a railway from Chester to Holyhead, and to summon to their assistance all the scientific and practical knowledge, within their reach, to enable them to overcome, at the smallest expense, the great local difficulties which mountain barriers and arms of the sea opposed to such an undertaking. We are not aware that such a scheme ever occupied their thoughts. We know only that private individuals have executed it to their ruin. We know that Government refused to permit a bridge that would cost only £250,000 to be erected for the railway; and thus compelled the Company to expend £600,000 on the Tubular Bridge. We know that they compelled the Company to contribute £200,000 as a contribution to the Harbour of Refuge of Holyhead. We know that from the conduct of Government and other parties, the Parliamentary and law expenses amounted to £46,740, 4s. 5d. We know that from the exactions of voracious landholders, who derived incalculable benefit from the undertaking, the cost of land that might have been given gratis, or at least at its real value, was 2 F

VOL. XIII. NO. XXVI.

£294,150. We know-but who is to blame we cannot tellthat the excess beyond the Parliamentary estimate amounts to £945,000.* But we know more than all this. The Government have demanded gratuitous services from this unfortunate Railway Company; they have paid them illiberally for services that ought to have been well paid; they have compelled them to carry passengers at less than the cost price; and they have crushed them to the very ground, along with other Companies, by a system of unprincipled taxation which reason and justice equally disown.

From the general and vague idea of an oppressed and impoverished Company, the imagination carries us to the ill-fated individuals who compose it-to men of property driven from their estates-to men of wealth reduced to poverty-to men of professional industry lowered in the social scale-to widows and orphans thrown upon their neighbour's charity, or cast upon the tender mercies of the workhouse. Such is the English system of carrying on national undertakings! Startling though it be, we cannot characterise it as a novelty, and charge it against any living statesman. It is but a gigantic step in an ancient and well-trodden pathway; and in these pages we have had repeated occasions ‡ to denounce the national infirmity in the strongest terms of remonstrance and reproof. It is an English saying of deep import, and pregnant with great results, that ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY; but History, in tears, has written the fatal counterpart on the wall, that NO MAN EXPECTS ENGLAND TO DO HERS!

* The following table exhibits this remarkable and instructive fact :

-Scrivener's Railways of the United Kingdom, p. 418.

+ The Quarterly Review justly characterises as excruciating certain terms to which Government obliged the Railway Company to submit.See No. CLXX., September 1849, p. 448.

See this Review, vol. iv. pp. 411, 412 ; v. p. 218.

The Liberties of the Gallican Church.

447

ART. V.-Manuel du Droit Public Ecclésiastique Français, contenant les Libertés de l'Eglise Gallicane, la Déclaration du Clergé de 1682, le Concordat et sa Loi Organique, avec une Exposition des Principes sur les Appels comme d'Abus, les Congrégations et l'Enseignement Public. Par M. DUPIN, Procureur-Général près la Cour de Cassation. Cinquième Edition. Paris, 1845.

THE author of this "Manuel" was the Rapporteur and the principal author of the Charter of 1830, which provided for the constitutional government of France under the Monarchy of the House of Orleans, and he is now the President of the Assembly which represents and rules the French Republic. During the intervening period, he occupied important public situations, distinguished himself at the bar and in the Chamber of Deputies, and acquired celebrity by his writings. He took a very active and prominent part in opposing the Jesuits, and in resisting the attempts of the clergy to extend their control over the universities and public schools. The controversy between the clergy and the universities led to a revival of the discussions about the Liberties of the Gallican Church. The Jesuit, or ultramontane party, who were opposed to these liberties, were most zealous in maintaining the jurisdiction of the clergy over universities and seminaries. This led their opponents, as matter of policy, to undertake the defence of the Liberties, and all the more because they could appeal to laws of the realm which prescribed the inculcation of the principles of the Liberties in schools and colleges, and had thus a strong argument against the clergy's claim to control education, founded on their unwillingness to enforce this legal requirement.

The first edition of this work of M. Dupin was published in 1824, and when the third edition came out in 1844, it was denounced as containing erroneous and dangerous views in a mandement published by Cardinal Bonald, Archbishop of Lyons, who is the head of the Jesuit or ultramontane party in the Church of France. This 'mandement' of the Cardinal was brought under the cognizance of the Council of State in March 1845, and, by a decree of that body, it was condemned and suppressed "as infringing upon the liberties, privileges, and customs of the Gallican Church, which are consecrated by the acts of the publie authorities." Cardinal Bonald's denunciation of Dupin's Manual only increased its popularity, and led to the publication of two enlarged editions of it, one in the end of 1844, and the other, that now lying before us, in April 1845.