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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
down over 100 years ago. We convey over it nearly 500,000 tons of
limestone annually, and I find it a cheap and expeditious mode of
conveyance."

I would call special attention to these details because it was, no

doubt, the fact that ordinary road carts, with flat-edged wheels,
could be taken along the flanged plates of the early railways, and
were so taken under authority of the Acts of Parliament here in
question, that originally established the idea both of a common user
of the railways by traders employing their own vehicles upon them
and of competition being thus ensured between different carriers.
The pioneer public railways, provided as accessories to canal
transport, were, indeed, looked upon as simply a variation, in
principle, of the ordinary turnpike road. They were roads furnished
with rails, and available for use, on payment of the authorised tolls,
by anyone whose cart-wheels were the right distance apart.

The position in this respect was entirely changed when the system
of railway operation came to be definitely fixed on the principle of
edge-rails and flanged wheels, with locomotives in place of horses;
yet the legislation immediately following the spread of railways on
this vastly different basis was still determined, as regarded their use
by the public, by the precedent originally established under the
conditions here narrated.

While thus operated on the toll principle of a turnpike road—the

pioneer "railway stations" being themselves simply the equivalent of
toll-houses—the early railways were all associated with canal or river
transport. Robert Fulton says in his "Treatise on the Improvement of
Canal Navigation" (1796) that "Rail-roads have hitherto been
considered as a medium between lock-canals and cartage, in
consequence of the expence of extending the canal to the particular
works in its neighbourhood"; and, in the course of a detailed
argument in favour of small boats, of from two to five tons burden,
in preference to the unduly large ones—as he considered them—
then in vogue, he adds: "Rail-ways of one mile or thereabouts will,
no doubt, be frequently necessary, where it may be difficult to find
water at the extremity, or when the trade from the works is not
sufficient to pay the expence of machinery,[33] and, its extent being
one mile, can be of little importance to the country."

That Parliament itself, at this time, looked upon railways only as

accessories to canals is shown by a reference to the "House of
Commons Journals," where, under date June 19, 1799, it is reported
that a Committee appointed, on the 10th of the same month, "to
consider the expediency of requiring notices to be given of an
intended application to Parliament for leave to bring in a Bill for the
making of Ways or Roads usually called Railways or Dram Roads, or
for the renewal or alteration of an Act passed for that purpose," had
adopted the following resolution: "That it is the opinion of this
Committee, That the Standing Orders of the House of the 7th of
May, 1794, relating to Bills for making Navigable Canals, Aqueducts
and the Navigation of Rivers, or for altering any Act of Parliament for
any or either of those purposes, be extended to Bills for making any
Ways or Roads, commonly called Railways or Dram Roads, except so
much of the said Standing Orders as requires," etc. The resolution
was agreed to by the House on the 25th of the same month.

Towards the close of the century it became customary for canal

companies applying to Parliament for powers, or extensions of
existing powers, to seek for authority to make railways, waggon
ways or stone roads in connection with their canals; and these they
were generally authorised to lay down to any existing or future
mines, quarries, furnaces, forges or other works within a distance of,
at first four, subsequently eight, miles of such canal. They were,
also, authorised to construct any bridges necessary for giving access
to the canal. If, after being asked to make a railway, waggon road or
bridge, under these conditions, the canal company refused so to do,
the person or persons concerned could carry out the work at his or
their own cost and charges, without the consent of the owner of the
lands, rivers, brooks or water-courses it might be necessary to cross,
though subject to the payment to them of compensation under
conditions analogous to those in force in regard to the construction
of canals. One Act of this type, the Aberdare Canal Act, 1793, goes
on to say: "Every such rail way or waggon road and bridge ... shall
... be publick and open to all persons for the conveyance of any
minerals, goods, wares, merchandizes and things, in waggons and
other carriages," of a specified construction, "and for the passage of
horses, cows and other meat cattle, on payment to the person or
persons at whose charge and expense such rail way or waggon road
shall have been made or erected" of the same rates as would be
payable to the canal company under like conditions.

It was in South Wales, even more than on the Tyne, that the early
railways eventually underwent their greatest development. In
"Illustrations of the Origin and Progress of Rail and Tram Roads and
Steam Carriages or Loco-motive Engines" (1824), by T. G. Cumming,
Surveyor, Denbigh, we read:—

"As late as the year 1790 there was scarcely a single rail-way in all
South Wales, whilst in the year 1812 the rail-ways, in a finished
state, connected with canals, collieries, iron and copper works, &c.,
in the counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan and Carmarthen alone
extended to upwards of one hundred and fifty miles in length,
exclusive of a very considerable extent within the mines themselves,
of which one company at Merthyr Tydvil possessed upwards of thirty
miles underground connected with the stupendous iron works at that
place; and so rapid has been the increase of rail-ways in South
Wales of late years that at the present period they exceed four
hundred miles, exclusive of about one hundred miles underground."

The whole of these lines were on the tram-plate, or flanged-rail,

principle, while solid blocks of stone were, in Wales, generally
substituted for wooden sleepers. Cumming further says:—

"In the extensive mining districts south of the Severn, including

South Wales, the rail and tram roads are very numerous, and here,
perhaps, more than in any part of the United Kingdom, owing to the
steepness, great irregularity and impracticable nature of the ground,
they have been of the most essential utility in supplying the place of
canals....

"There are numerous tram roads connected with the canal between
Cardiff and Merthyr Tydvil, in Glamorganshire. The extent of rail road
about Merthyr Tydvil alone is very considerable; besides which, in
the same neighbourhood are the Hirwaen, Aberdare, and Abernant
tram roads, and a great variety of others communicating with the
vast works on the hills in the vicinity."

One of the South Wales tramroad schemes—though not specifically

mentioned by Cumming—is of exceptional interest inasmuch as it
represented, probably, the first attempt ever made to introduce a
railway as a direct rival of and competitor with a canal, instead of
being simply a feeder thereof. The attempt was a failure, but it
nevertheless constitutes a landmark in early railway history.

The story begins with the granting, in 1790, of an Act for the cutting
of a canal between Merthyr and Cardiff by the Company of
Proprietors of the Glamorganshire Canal Navigation, improved
means of transport being then much needed in the interests of the
iron-works and other industrial undertakings in the district. The Act
of 1790 authorised the company to spend £90,000 on the canal; but
this amount was found to be inadequate, and in 1796 a second Act
sanctioned the raising of a further £10,000, and, also, the cutting of
a short extension at the Cardiff end.
The opening of the canal for traffic is thus recorded by J. Phillips in
the fourth edition (1803) of his "General History of Inland
Navigation":—

"Feb. 1794. The canal from Cardiff to Merthir-Tidvil is completed,

and a fleet of canal boats have arrived at Cardiff laden with the
produce of the iron works there, to the great joy of the whole town.
The rude tracks, through which the canal passes in some places are
constantly improving, from the happy and healthful toil of the
husbandman, and in a few years will be forgotten in a garden of
verdure and fertility. This canal is 25 miles long; it passes along the
sides of stupendous mountains. Nothing appears more extraordinary
than, from a boat navigating this canal, to look down on the river
Taaf, dashing among the rocks 100 yards below. The fall from
Merthir-Tidvil to Cardiff is nearly 600 feet."

In a later reference, dated 1802, Phillips says that the completion of

the Glamorganshire Canal "has opened a ready conveyance to the
vast manufacture of iron established in the mountains of that
country, and many thousands of tons are now annually shipped from
thence."

The canal, however, failed to meet all requirements, a scheme for a

railway, or dram-road, between Cardiff and Merthyr being projected
in the same year that the waterway was first opened.

In "Rees' Cyclopædia" (1819) it is stated: "The rail-ways hitherto

constructed were private property, or for the accommodation of
particular mines or works, and it was not, we believe, until about the
year 1794 that Mr Samuel Homfray and others obtained an act of
Parliament for constructing an iron dram-road, tram-road or rail-way
between Cardiff and Merthyr Tidvill in South Wales, that should be
free for any persons to use, with drams or trams of the specified
construction on paying certain tonnage or rates per mile to the
proprietors." Tredgold, in his "Practical Treatise on Rail-roads"
(1825), makes a similar statement as regards the granting of an Act
in 1794, saying that "in consequence of the upper part of the Cardiff
or Glamorganshire canal being frequently in want of water, the
Cardiff and Merthyr rail-way or tram-road was formed parallel to it,
for a distance of about nine miles, chiefly for the iron works of
Plymouth, Pendarran and Dowlais," with a continuation, however,
making a total distance of about 26¾ miles. The tramway, he
further says, "appears to have been constructed under the first Act
ever obtained for this species of road."

These statements have been accepted and repeated by various

writers; but a search of the "House of Commons Journals" for 1794
fails to show that any such Act was passed. The scheme in question
seems to have been projected, in 1794, by certain ironmasters, who
found that their own traffic on the canal was being prejudiced by a
preference given to the traffic of their rivals; but the project for a
tramway or railway from Merthyr to Cardiff was abandoned—for a
time—in favour of one from Merthyr to a place then called
Navigation, and now known as Abercynon, where the canal would be
joined, and traffic could be transhipped.

The tramway in question is thus referred to in "The Scenery,

Antiquities and Biography of South Wales, from Material Collected
during two Excursions in the year 1803," by B. H. Malkin (second
edition, 1807):—

"At the Aqueduct, where the Canal is carried over the River, an iron
rail-road for the present ends; and from the Wharf at this place
[Navigation] the Canal is the only conveyance for heavy goods to
Cardiff; the length of it—as far as it has already been completed—is
10 miles, but it was designed to have extended from Merthyr Tydfil
to Cardiff, and it is said that one horse would have been able to
draw 40 tons of iron the whole distance of 26 miles in one day; I
understand, however, that it is not likely to be finished, and, indeed,
it is much more necessary where it is now made from the occasional
want of water lower down where the confluence of many and
copious streams affords a more certain supply to the Canal."

The line had evidently been constructed, not under any special Act,
but by the authority of powers already granted by clause 57 of the
Glamorganshire Canal Company's own Act, which, framed on the
general lines already mentioned, conferred upon all persons owning,
renting, leasing, or occupying property containing any mines of coal,
iron-stone, limestone or other minerals, or the proprietors of any
furnaces or other works lying within the distance of four miles from
some part of the canal the right to make any railways or roads over
the lands or grounds of any person or persons, or to make any
bridges over any river, brook or watercourse, for the purpose of
conveying the coal, iron, etc., to the said canal.

It will be noticed that this clause appears to limit to four miles the
length of any tramway constructed in virtue of its provisions,
whereas the length of the line actually made was, in effect, nine
miles from Merthyr and ten from Dowlais. It is understood, however,
that the constructors of the tramway successfully contended that, so
long as their mines or works were within four miles of the canal,
they were at liberty to lay down the tramway to such point on the
canal as they thought proper to select, and they chose Navigation
because it suited them best.

There is reason to believe, although actual proof is lacking, that the

original design of continuing this tramway to Cardiff was not carried
out because of the opposition of the canal company. Certain it is that
the project for such a tramway was revived in 1799. Under date
February 18, in that year, the "House of Commons Journals" record
that William Lewis (Alderley), William Taitt, Thomas Guest, Joseph
Cowles, and John Guest, being a firm of ironmasters in the parish of
Merthyr Tydvil, known as the Dowlais Iron Company; Jeremiah
Homfray, Samuel Homfray, Thomas Homfray and William Forman,
ironmasters, of Merthyr Tydvil, known by the name of Jeremiah
Homfray and Co.; Richard Hill and William Lewis (Pentyrch Works)
petitioned the House for leave to bring in a Bill for the construction
of a "dram road" from or near Carno Mill, in the parish of Bedwelty
and the county of Monmouth to Cardiff, with branches to Merthyr
and Aberdare.[34]

The petitioners declared that such dram-road would "open an easy

Communication with several considerable Ironworks, Collieries,
Limestone Quarries and extensive Tracks of Land, abounding with
Coal, Limestone and other Minerals, whereby the Carriage and
Conveyance of Iron, Coal, Lime, Timber and all kinds of Merchandize
to or from the different Places bordering on the said intended Road
will be greatly facilitated and rendered less expensive than at
present, and will tend greatly to improve the Lands and Estates near
the said Road, and the said Undertaking will, in other Respects, be
of great Public Utility."

The petition was referred to a Committee, who reported favourably

on March 8, and the Bill was presented and read a first time on
March 15. Then, however, came the opposition from the canal
company. On April 8, as the "Journals" further record, the Commons
received a petition from the Company of Proprietors of the
Glamorganshire Canal Navigation setting forth that they had been
authorised under two Acts to make and maintain a navigable canal
from Merthyr to Cardiff; that they had expended on this undertaking
a sum of £100,000; that they had seen the Bill above-mentioned,
and, they proceed:—

"That the Dram Road or Way, proposed to be made by the said Bill,
will pass from one End thereof to the other, nearly parallel, and in
almost every Part near to the said Canal; and in some places will
cross the same; and that the Petitioners were induced to undertake
the making of the said Canal, in hopes of being repaid the Expence
thereof, with proper remuneration for the Risk of the said
Undertaking, by the Carriage of Coal, Lime, Iron, Timber, and other
goods and Merchandizes thereon, but if the said Dram Road or Way
should be made as proposed they would be deprived of a great Part
of those Advantages which they apprehend they have had granted
and secured to them, and are therefore now fully entitled to, by the
said Two Acts, without the Country adjacent or the Public in General,
receiving any particular Benefit or Advantage."

The company further pleaded that under their Acts they were
"restrained from ever receiving more than a moderate Dividend on
their Shares, and whenever the Profits of the Canal shall be more
than sufficient to pay the same, their Rates of Tonnage are to be
lowered;[35] and for that reason, as well as many others, of equal
Justice, they conceive they should be secured in the possession of all
the advantages proposed to be granted to them by the said Acts."

The House ordered that the petition do lie upon the table until the
said Bill be read a second time, and that counsel be then heard on
both sides. On May 3 a day was appointed for the second reading,
and on May 4 the House received a further petition from
landowners, tradesmen and others in support of the Bill. The
"Journals," however, contain no record of the second reading having
been reached, and their only further reference at all to the Bill is in
the "General Index" to the volumes for 1790-1801, where, under the
heading "Navigations: Petitions to make Dram Roads to Canals, &c.,"
it is said of the Bill in question "Not proceeded in."

There is no reason to doubt that this first scheme for the

construction of a railway—even though under the name of a "dram
road"—which would have been not only independent of canal
transport but in direct competition therewith, was killed through the
opposition of the then powerful canal interests. The tradition in
Cardiff is that the Glamorganshire Canal Company "got hold" of the
leading promoters, and persuaded them to abandon their scheme by
electing them members of the managing committee of the canal.
Whether or not some additional inducement was offered to them is
not known. In any case, there was no further attempt to set up a
railway in direct and avowed competition with a canal until the great
fight over the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill, a quarter of a
century later.

The significance of all these facts will be found still greater in the
light of what I shall have to say subsequently in regard to the
influence of canal interests and canal precedents alike on railway
development and on railway legislation.

In some instances the railways belonging to the period here under

review were constructed by the canal companies not merely as
feeders to the canals but as substitutes for lengths of canal where
the making of an artificial waterway presented special difficulties.
The Lancashire Canal Company, incorporated in 1792, laid a line of
railway for five miles, passing through the town of Preston, to
connect two sections of canal. The Ashby Canal Company, under an
Act of 1794, avoided a considerable expense in the construction of
locks by supplementing thirty miles of canal on the level with
intermediate lengths of railway to the extent of another twenty
miles. Writing in 1884, Clement E. Stretton says, in his "Notes on
Early Railway History," concerning these old tram-roads of the Ashby
Canal Company: "One part has since been altered and absorbed into
the Ashby and Worthington Railway;[36] but the branch from Ticknall
tramway wharf to Tucknall has never been relaid or altered in any
way, and, therefore, is a most interesting relic of ancient times. To
see waggons with flat wheels drawn over cast-iron rails one yard
long by a horse, cannot fail to interest those who watch the
workings of railways, and it most clearly shows the great
improvements made and the perseverance which has been required
to develop the present gigantic railway system out of such small
beginnings."

The Charnwood Forest Canal, again, concerning which I shall have

more to say later, was a connecting link between two lines of edge-
railway, the purpose of the combined land and water route being to
enable Leicestershire coal to reach the Leicester market.

It will thus be seen that, whilst the coalowners introduced railways in

the first instance, it was the canal companies themselves who, in the
days before locomotives, mainly developed and established the
utility of a new mode of traction which was eventually to supersede
to so material an extent the inland navigation they favoured. It was
open to those companies to adapt their undertakings much more
completely to the new conditions, if they had had sufficient foresight
and enterprise so to do.

The signs of the times were obvious enough to those who were able
and willing to read them, and there were many indications that
canals would assuredly be not only supplemented, but supplanted,
by railways. An impartial authority like Thomas Telford, in adding a
postscript to an article on "Canals" which he had contributed to
Archdeacon Plymley's "General View of the Agriculture of
Shropshire," wrote under date November 13, 1800:—

"Since the year 1797, when the above account of the inland
navigation of the county of Salop was made out, another mode of
conveyance has frequently been adopted in this country to a
considerable extent; I mean that of forming roads with iron rails laid
along them, upon which the articles are conveyed on waggons,
containing from six to thirty cwt.; experience has now convinced us
that in countries whose surfaces are rugged, or where it is difficult to
obtain water for lockage, where the weight of the articles of produce
is great in comparison with their bulk, and where they are mostly to
be conveyed from a higher to a lower level,—that in those cases,
iron rail-ways are in general preferable to a canal navigation.

"On a rail-way well constructed, and laid with a declivity of 55 feet in

a mile, one horse will readily take down waggons containing from 12
to 15 tons, and bring back the same waggons with four tons in
them....

"This useful contrivance may be varied so as to suit the surface of

many different countries at a comparatively moderate expense. It
may be constructed in a manner much more expeditious than
navigable canals; it may be introduced into many districts where
canals are wholly inapplicable; and in case of any change in the
working of the mines or manufactures, the rails may be taken up
and put down again, in a new situation, at a moderate expense."

Thomas Gray, writing in 1821, warned investors in canal shares that

the time was "fast approaching when rail-ways must, from their
manifest superiority in every respect, supersede the necessity both
of canals and turnpike roads, so far as the general commerce of the
country was concerned." He further expressed the conviction that
"were canal proprietors sensible how much their respective shares
would be improved in value by converting all the canals into rail-
ways, there would not, perhaps, in the space of ten or twenty years
remain a single canal in the country."

Blinded by their prosperity, however, the canal companies failed to

adopt the necessary measures for ensuring its continuance, though
the Duke of Bridgewater himself saw sufficient of the new rival to
get an uneasy suspicion of what might happen. "We may do very
well," he is reported to have said to Lord Kenyon, when asked about
the prospects of his canals, "if we can keep clear of those —— tram-
roads." Unfortunately for the canal interests, though fortunately for
the country, the qualified tram-roads were not to be kept clear of,
but, with the encouragement they got from those they afterwards
impoverished, were to bring the Canal Era to a close, and to
inaugurate the Railway Era in its place.
 CHAPTER XIX

THE RAILWAY ERA

Between 1801 and 1825 no fewer than twenty-nine "iron railways"

were either opened or begun in various parts of Great Britain. The
full list is given by John Francis in his "History of the English
Railway." It shows, as Francis points out, that from Plymouth to
Glasgow, and from Carnarvon to Surrey, "there was scarcely a
county where some form of the railway was not used." Most of these
new railways were, however, still operated in conjunction with
collieries or ironworks and canals or rivers, as the following typical
examples show:—

1802: Sirhowey Tramroad, built by the Monmouthshire Canal

Company in conjunction with the Tredegar Iron-works; length,
eleven miles; cost £45,000.

1809: Forest of Dean Railway, for conveying coals, timber, ore, etc.,
to the Severn for shipment; length, seven and a half miles; cost
£125,000.

1809: Severn and Wye Railway, connecting those rivers; length, 26

miles; cost £110,000.

1812: Penrhynmaur Railway, Anglesey; a colliery line, seven miles

long, consisting of a series of inclined planes.

1815: Gloucester and Cheltenham Railway, connecting with the

Berkeley Canal at Gloucester.
1817: Mansfield and Pinxton Railway, connecting the town of
Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, with the Cromford Canal at Pinxton
basin, near Alfreton, Derbyshire; cost £32,800.

1819: Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway; length 30 miles; cost

£35,000.

1825: Cromford and High Peak Railway, connecting the Cromford

and Peak Forest Canals, and rising, by a series of elevations, 990
feet; length 34 miles; cost £164,000.

The first Act for a really public railway, in the sense in which that
term is understood to-day, and as distinct from railways serving
mainly or exclusively the interests of collieries, iron-works and canal
navigations, was granted by Parliament in 1801 for the Surrey Iron
Rail-way, which established a rail connection between the Thames at
Wandsworth and the town of Croydon, with a branch to some mills
on the river Wandle whose owners were the leaders in the
enterprise. The total length was about nine and a half miles.
According to the Act, the line was designed for "the advantage of
carrying coals, corn and all goods and merchandise to and from the
Metropolis." Constructed with flanged rails, or "plates," fixed on
stone blocks, the line was available for any ordinary cart or waggon
of the requisite gauge. The conveyances mostly used on it were
four-wheeled trucks, about the size of railway contractors' waggons.
They belonged either to local traders or to carriers who let them out
on hire, it being doubtful whether the company had any rolling stock
of their own. The motive power was supplied by horses, mules or
donkeys. Chalk, flint, fire-stone, fuller's earth and agricultural
produce were sent from Croydon—then a town of 5700 inhabitants—
to the Thames for conveyance to London. The return loading from
the Thames was mainly coal and manure. Two sets of rails were
provided, and there was a path on each side for the men in charge
of the horses.
Referring to the Surrey Iron Rail-way in his "History of Private Bill
Legislation," Clifford says:—

"The Act of 1801, upon which the rest of this early railway legislation
was framed, follows the canal precedents in their provision for
managing the company's affairs, for raising share and loan capital,
and for compensating landowners. Only the use of horse power was
contemplated. The tracks, when laid down, were meant, like canals,
for general use by carriers and freighters. The companies did not
provide rolling stock; any person might construct carriages adapted
to run upon the rails, and if these carriages were approved certain
maximum tolls applied to the freight they might carry.... Passenger
traffic was not expected or provided for.... Such was the first Railway
Act, passed at the beginning of the century with little notice by
Parliament or people, but now a social landmark, prominent in that
stormy period of history."

This was, however, in point of fact, only a further development of

the still earlier railway legislation (see page 210), which required the
proprietors of lines laid down for general traffic to allow anyone who
pleased to run his own vehicles thereon, subject to certain
regulations and to the payment of specified tolls.

The Surrey Iron Rail-way was also a landmark in railway history

because, although in itself of very small extent, it was originally
designed to serve as the first section of a railway which, made by
different companies, as capital could be raised, would eventually
have extended from the Thames to Portsmouth.[37] The second
section was the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Iron Railway,
which Parliament sanctioned in 1803. From Croydon this further
railway was to carry the lines on to Reigate, with a branch from
Merstham to Godstone Green, a total distance of sixteen miles in
addition, that is, to the nine and a half miles of the Surrey Iron Rail-
way. Both companies, however, drifted into financial difficulties, and
had to apply to Parliament again, in 1806, for fresh powers, while
the lines of the second company never got beyond the chalk
quarries at Merstham.

In the absence of the through traffic it had been hoped eventually to

secure, the local business alone available was evidently inadequate
to meet the charges on a capital outlay which, at that time, may
have been regarded as not inconsiderable, inasmuch as the Surrey
Iron Rail-way attained to a good elevation at its southern end, while
the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone line went through a cutting
thirty feet deep, and crossed a valley by an embankment twenty feet
high. After a chequered career, the Merstham line was acquired by
the Brighton Railway Company in 1838 and closed, being then no
longer required. The Surrey line lingered on till 1846, when, with the
sanction of Parliament, its operation was discontinued, the rails
being taken up and sold by auction.

It was unfortunate that these two pioneer public railways were a

failure because, had they succeeded, and had they really formed the
first sections of a through line of communication between the
Thames and Portsmouth, there would have been established a
further precedent—and one of much greater value than that of a
common user—the precedent, namely, of a trunk line made by
companies co-operating with one another to give continuous
communication on a well-organised system, in place of collections of
disconnected lines designed, at the outset, to serve the interests
only of particular localities, with little or no attempt at co-ordination.

Yet the principle of a general public railway had, at least, been

established by the Surrey and Merstham lines, and this principle
underwent further important development by the Stockton and
Darlington Railway, the first Act for which was obtained in 1821.
The only purpose originally intended to be served by the Stockton
and Darlington Railway was the finding of a better outlet for coal
from the South Durham coalfield. A company, with Edward Pease as
the moving spirit, was formed in 1816, but two years later the
projectors were still undecided whether to make a canal or "a rail or
tramway." George Overton, who preceded George Stephenson as a
distinguished railway engineer, wrote to them, however, advising the
latter course. "Railways," he said, "are now generally adopted, and
the cutting of canals nearly discontinued"; and he told them, further,
that within the last fifteen years the great improvements made in
the construction of tram-roads had led to the application of the
principle to a number of new roads. His advice was adopted, and the
first Act, obtained after several unsuccessful efforts, authorised the
making and maintaining of "a railway or tramroad" from the river
Tees, at Stockton, to Witton Park Colliery, with various branches
therefrom. The line would, the Act said, be "of great public utility by
facilitating the conveyance of coal, iron, lime, corn and other
commodities from the interior of the county of Durham to the town
of Darlington and the town and port of Stockton," etc.

It was first intended to use wooden rails, and to rely on horse-

power, no authority for the employment of locomotives being
obtained under the Act of 1821; but George Stephenson, on being
appointed engineer to the line, persuaded the company to adopt iron
rails in preference to wooden ones, and to provide a locomotive such
as he had already constructed and successfully employed at
Killingworth Colliery. Two-thirds of the rails laid were of malleable
iron and one-third of cast iron. It was not, however, until September,
1824, that the order was actually given for a locomotive, some of
the promoters having still shown a strong preference for the use of
stationary engines and ropes.

The line was opened for traffic on September 27, 1825, and the
locomotive which had been ordered—the "Locomotion" as it was
called—was ready for the occasion. It weighed seven tons, and had
perpendicular cylinders and a boiler provided with only a single flue,
or tube, 10 inches in diameter and 10 feet in length, the heat being
abstracted therefrom so imperfectly that when the locomotive was
working the chimney soon became red-hot.[38] The usual speed was
from four to six miles an hour, with a highest possible of eight miles
an hour on the level.

The company made provision for the anticipated goods traffic by

having 150 waggons built; but they started with no idea of
themselves undertaking passenger traffic. Their first Act had laid
down that "Any person is at liberty to use and run a carriage on the
railway, provided he complies with the bye-laws of the company";
and J. S. Jeans, in his history of the Stockton and Darlington Railway
published (1875) under the title of "Jubilee Memorial of the Railway
System," says: "It was originally intended to allow the proprietors of
stage-coaches or other conveyances plying on the route of the
proposed new railway to make use of the line on certain specified
conditions." This, too, is what actually happened; for although, a
fortnight after the opening of the line, the railway company
themselves put on the line a springless "coach," known as the
"Experiment," and drawn by a horse, several coach proprietors in the
district availed themselves of their statutory right to run their own
coaches on the railway, first, of course, providing them with wheels
adapted to the rails. They paid the railway company the stipulated
tolls, and had the advantage of requiring to use no more than a
single horse for each coach. These horse coaches for passengers
seem to have run in the intervals when the lines were not occupied
by the locomotive engaged in drawing the coal waggons.

In a letter published in the "Railway Herald" of April 27, 1889, John

Wesley Hackworth, whose father, Timothy Hackworth, was for some
time engineer on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, says that
twenty miles of the line were at first worked by horses and
locomotive in competition, and at the end of eighteen months it was
found that horse traction was costing only a little over one-third of
the traction by locomotive. Meanwhile, also, the value of the £100
shares had fallen to £50. In view of these results the directors had
decided to abandon locomotive power, and depend entirely on
horses; but Timothy Hackworth said to them, "If you will allow me to
construct an engine in my own way I will engage it shall work
cheaper than animal power." He received the desired authority, and
the "Royal George," built by him, was put into operation in
September, 1827. It confirmed the assurance which had been given,
and, says Timothy Hackworth's son, "finally and for ever" settled the
question of the respective merits of horse and steam traction on
railways.

Horse coaches still continued to run on the lines, however, in

addition to the mineral and goods trains, and in January, 1830, the
company had to draw up a time-table fixing the hours of departure
for the coaches, thus ensuring a better service for the public, and,
also, protecting travellers against any possible encounter with the
locomotive as the horse ambled along with them on the railway.

By October, 1832, seven coaches, belonging to various proprietors,

were doing fifty journeys a week between different places on the
line; so that thus far the original idea of Parliament, in enforcing
against railways the principle of a common user of their lines by the
public, had appeared to be warranted. A year later, however, the
railway company, finding, as Jeans tells us, that it would be more
convenient and more advantageous for them to take the whole
carrying trade in their own hands and supersede the horses by
steam locomotives, bought out, on what were considered generous
terms, the interests of the four coach proprietors then carrying
passengers on their own account on the lines.

Actual experience had thus nullified the expectation that a railway

would be simply a rail-road upon which anyone would be able to run
his own conveyances as on an ordinary turnpike road.
From October, 1833, the whole of the passenger traffic (then
undergoing rapid expansion) was conducted by the company. In
April, 1834, the directors, who had by this time acquired some other
and better engines, announced that they had commenced to run, six
times a day, both "coaches" (for passengers) and "carriages" (for
goods) by locomotives; and this date, probably, marks the final
disappearance of the horse as a means of traction for passenger
traffic on public railways in England, though the word "coaches,"
introduced into the railway vocabulary under the circumstances here
narrated, has remained in use ever since among railway men as
applied to rolling stock for passenger traffic.

Unlike its predecessors in Surrey, and though facing various

difficulties at the outset, the Stockton and Darlington line attained to
a considerable degree of prosperity. After undergoing various
extensions from time to time, and playing a leading part in the
industrial expansion of the district it served, it was incorporated into
what is now the North-Eastern Railway system.

Summing up the respects in which the Stockton and Darlington line

had carried forward the story of railway development, we find that it
(1) established the practicability of substituting locomotive for horse
traction on railways; (2) introduced the provision of waggons by the
railway company, instead of leaving these to be found by carriers
and traders; (3) proved that railways were as well adapted to the
transport of passengers as they were to the carriage of goods; (4)
showed by actual experience that the idea of a common user of
railways was impracticable; and (5) prepared the way for the
eventual recognition, even by Parliament itself, of the principle that
transport on a line of railway operated by locomotives must, in the
nature of things, be the monopoly of the owning and responsible
railway company.
While the Surrey Iron Rail-way and the Stockton and Darlington
Railway had been thus seeking to establish themselves as public
railways, there was no lack of advocates of what were then called
"general rail-ways," to be laid either on the ordinary roads or on
roads made for the purpose; and such general railways were
especially advocated for districts where canals could not be made
available.

Dr James Anderson, writing on "Cast Iron Rail-ways" in the issue of

his "Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History," etc., for November,
1800, had already strongly recommended them as "an eligible mode
of conveyance where canals cannot be conveniently adopted"; and
he especially advised the construction of one railway in London, from
the new docks on the Isle of Dogs to Bishopsgate Street, and
another between London and Bath, "for the purpose of conveying
unsightly loads, leaving the roads, as at present, open for coaches
and light carriages." Such railways, he argued, would render great
service in relieving the ordinary road of heavy traffic, and help to
solve the road problem of that day—all the more acute because
McAdam had not yet shown the country how roads could and should
be made or repaired.

On February 11, 1800, Mr Thomas, of Denton, read a paper before

the Newcastle Literary Society recommending the introduction of
railways, on the colliery principle, for the general carriage of goods;
and R. L. Edgeworth urged, in "Nicholson's Journal," in 1802, that
for a distance of ten miles or more one of the great roads out of
London should be provided with four tracks of railway operated by
stationary engines and circulating chains for fast and slow traffic in
each direction.

But the most strenuous advocate of all was Thomas Gray. Both
before and subsequent to the publication, in 1820, of the first edition
of his "Observations on a General Rail-way," he had been pressing
his views, in the form of petitions, letters or articles, on members of
the Government, peers of the realm, M.P.'s, corporations, capitalists,
reviews and newspapers. His idea was that there should be six trunk
lines of railway radiating from London, with branch lines linking up
towns and villages off these main routes; but he was looked upon as
a visionary, if not as a crank and a bore whose impracticable
proposals were not deserving of serious consideration. It was
evidently Thomas Gray whom the "Quarterly Review" had in mind
when it said, in March, 1825: "As to those persons who speculate on
making railways general throughout the Kingdom, and superseding
all the canals, all the waggons, mail and stage-coaches, post-
chaises, and, in short, every other mode of conveyance by land and
water, we deem them and their visionary schemes unworthy of
notice."

In the result Gray was left to spend the last years of his life in
obscurity and poverty, and the further development of the railway
system of the country was proceeded with on lines altogether
different from, and far less efficient, than those he had
recommended.

The greatest impetus to the movement was now to come, not from
any individual pioneer, but from the Liverpool and Manchester
Railway; and this line, in turn, was due far more to purely local
conditions and circumstances than to any idea of encouraging the
creation of a network of railways on some approach, however
remote, to a national or "general" system. The original cause of the
Liverpool and Manchester line being undertaken was, in fact, nothing
less than extreme dissatisfaction among the traders both of
Liverpool and of Manchester with the then existing transport
arrangements between these two places.

Just as the Duke of Bridgewater had drawn his strongest arguments

in favour of a canal from the shortcomings of the Irwell and Mersey
navigation, so now did the traders base their case for a railway
mainly on the deficiencies and shortcomings alike of the river
navigation and of the canal by which the rivers had been
supplemented.

There were, in the first place, physical difficulties. By whichever of

the two water routes goods were sent from Liverpool to Manchester,
the barges had first to go about eighteen miles along the Mersey to
Runcorn, being thus exposed for that distance to the possibly
adverse winds and strong tides of an open estuary. The boats often
got aground, and many wrecks occurred during stormy weather. On
the canal itself the boats could often go with only half loads in the
summer, and they were liable to be stopped by frost in winter, while
the canal was closed altogether for ten days every year for repairs.

Supplementing these physical disadvantages of the navigation was

the attitude of the waterway interests towards the traders whom
they held at their mercy. Theoretically there was competition
between the rivers and the canal; but the agents of both extorted
from the traders the highest possible charges for a most inefficient
service.

Joseph Sandars, who was to take a leading part in the movement for
a railway between Liverpool and Manchester, has some strong things
to say about the "exorbitant and unjust charges of the water
carriers" in a "Letter" on the subject of the proposed railway which
he published in 1824. He alleged that, whereas the Duke of
Bridgewater had been authorised by his Acts to charge not more
than two shillings and sixpence per ton for canal dues, his agents
had, by various devices, which Sandars details, exacted five shillings
and twopence per ton. The trustees had, also, obtained possession
of all the warehouses alongside the canal at Manchester, and they
were thus able to exact whatever terms they pleased from the bye-
carriers and traders. If the canal trustees carried the goods in their
own vessels they were entitled to charge six shillings per ton; and
their aim seems to have been to render it impossible for the
independent carriers to do their business at a lower rate than this.
When the carriers, using boats of their own, would not pay the same
rate as if the trustees had themselves done the carrying, they were
not allowed to land the goods.

Then, by acquiring all the warehouses and all the available land at
Preston Brook and Runcorn, the trustees had likewise got control
over navigation on the Trent and Mersey Canal, which joins the
Bridgewater Canal at Preston Brook. Sandars speaks of Mr
Bradshaw, to whom the Duke of Bridgewater had, by his will, given
absolute control of his undertakings, as a dictator of canal transport.
"No man," he says, in giving examples of the wide extent of the
interests that Bradshaw controlled or sought to influence, "can bring
a Bill forward for a canal in any part of the Kingdom but Mr
Bradshaw interferes as a sort of canal Neptune, directing where,
how, and at what price it shall run. He has tortured the trade of the
country to become tributory to him in all directions. Every man,
every corporate body, seems spellbound the moment Mr Bradshaw
interposes his authority." As for the profits of the undertaking,
Sandars says: "There is good reason to believe that the nett income
of the Duke's canal has, for the last twenty years, averaged nearly
£100,000 per annum."

The Old Quay Company had refrained from exceeding the amounts
they were authorised to charge for tolls on the Irwell and the
Mersey; but there was no restriction on them in regard to traffic they
themselves carried, and Sandars alleges that they, also, had secured
all the warehouse accommodation on their own line of route, and
had almost monopolised the carrying trade, since a bye-carrier's
business could hardly be conducted without warehouses. They were
thus making far more money than they could have got from the
statutory tolls alone. So profitable had the undertaking become that
the thirty-nine original proprietors had, Sandars continues, "been
paid every other year, for nearly half a century, the total amount of
their investment." An immense revenue was being raised at the
expense of the merchants and manufacturers, "and for no other
purpose than to enrich a few individuals who were daily violating
Acts of Parliament, Acts which, by a long course of cunning policy,"
they had contrived to convert into "the most oppressive and unjust
monopoly known to the trade of this Kingdom—a monopoly which,"
Sandars goes on to declare, "there is every reason to believe
compels the public to pay, in one shape or another, £100,000 more
per annum than they ought to pay."

The agents of the two companies not only agreed between

themselves what charges they would impose but, autocrats as they
were, they established a despotic sway over the traders. They set
up, says Francis, "a rotation by which they sent as much or as little
as suited them, and shipped it how or when they pleased. They held
levees, attended by crowds who, admitted one by one, almost
implored them to forward their goods. One firm was thus limited by
the supreme wisdom of the canal managers to sixty or seventy bags
a day. The effects were really disastrous; mills stood still for want of
material; machines were stopped for lack of food. Of 5000 feet of
pine timber required in Manchester by one house, 2000 remained
unshipped from November, 1824, to March, 1825."

Merchants whose timber was thus delayed in transit were fined for
allowing it to obstruct the quays; and Sandars tells of one who paid
£69 in fines on this account during the course of two months. It was
less costly and more convenient to leave the delayed timber where it
was, and pay the fines, than to keep moving it to and fro between
quay and timber yard; though the effect—especially as the imports
of timber increased—was to block up, not only the quays, but the
neighbouring streets, which thus became almost impassable for
carts and carriages.
Corn and other commodities had often to be kept back eight or ten
days on account of a lack of vessels. It sometimes happened that
commodities brought across the Atlantic in three weeks were
detained in Liverpool for six weeks before they could be sent on to
Manchester. The agents would not carry certain kinds of
merchandise or particular descriptions of cotton at all. Alternatively
they would tell a trader: "We took so much for you yesterday, and
we can take only so much for you to-day." "They limited the
quantity," says Francis, "they appointed the time, until the difficulties
of transit became a public talk and the abuse of power a public
trouble. The Exchange of Liverpool resounded with merchants'
complaints; the counting-houses of Manchester re-echoed the
murmurs of manufacturers."

To avoid serious delays either to raw materials or to manufactured

articles the traders were often forced to resort to road transport
"because," says Sandars, "speed and certainty as to delivery are of
the first importance"; and he adds on this point, "Packages of goods
sent from Manchester, for immediate shipment at Liverpool, often
pay two or three pounds per ton; and yet there are those who assert
that the difference of a few hours in speed can be no object. The
merchants know better."

The example already set in so many different parts of the country in

the provision of rail-ways, or railways, as they were now being
generally called, may well have suggested that in a resort to this
expedient would be found the most practical solution of the problem
which had caused so much trouble to the traders. Sandars himself
says that inasmuch as the two companies were "deaf to all
remonstrances, to all entreaties," and were "actuated solely by a
spirit of monopoly and extortion," the only remedy the public had
left was to go to Parliament and ask for permission to establish a
new line of conveyance—and one, also, that possessed decided
advantages over canal or river transport.
But here there arose a consideration which had a material bearing
on the problem immediately concerned, and was to affect the further
development of the railway system in general.

Numerous as were the lines already existing at this time, none of

them directly competed with the waterways. They were feeders
rather than rivals of the canals. Even the Surrey Iron Rail-way and
the Stockton and Darlington line, though operating independently of
the canal companies, had not come into conflict with them. In the
one instance—that of the Merthyr and Cardiff dram-road—in which a
railway had hitherto been projected in direct competition with a
canal the scheme had been either killed or bought off by the canal
interests. But the proposed Liverpool and Manchester Railway was
avowedly and expressly designed to compete with the existing water
services. It was not simply to supplement the waterways. It
threatened to supplant them.

So the waterway companies, representing very powerful interests—

inasmuch as by 1824 the amount invested in canal and navigation
schemes was about £14,000,000—might well think it necessary to
take action in defence of their own position. Down to this time they
had regarded the railway as either a friend or a non-competitor, and
they had either extended to it a sympathetic support or had, at
least, regarded it with a feeling of equanimity. Henceforward they
had to look upon it as an opponent.

The project for a Liverpool and Manchester Railway would seem to

have first begun to assume definite shape in or about 1822, when
William James, a London engineer, who had already proposed a
"Central Junction Rail-way or Tram-road" from Stratford-on-Avon to
London, made surveys between Liverpool and Manchester, and
prepared a set of plans. The certain prospect, however, of vigorous
opposition from the waterway interests led some of the traders to
think they had better make terms with the men in possession, if they
could; and in that same year the corn merchants of Liverpool
memorialised the Bridgewater trustees, asking both for a reduction
in the rate of freight and for better accommodation. Bradshaw
replied with an unqualified refusal, and he treated as idle talk the
then much-discussed project of a line of railway.

There is no doubt that if, at this period, reasonable concessions had

been made to the traders the building of the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway, although, of course, inevitable, would have
been delayed to a later period. The traders shrank, at first, from an
open fight, and the project of 1822 was allowed to drop for a time.
The situation was found to be so hopeless, however, that in 1824
they decided that mere concessions from the waterway interests
would no longer suffice, and that the provision of an alternative
means of transport had become imperative. A Liverpool and
Manchester Railway Company was now formed, and on October 29,
1824, there was issued a prospectus which was, in effect, a
declaration of war against the waterway parties who had so
mercilessly abused the situation they thought they controlled. This
document, after mentioning that the total quantity of merchandise
then passing between Liverpool and Manchester was estimated at
1000 tons a day, proceeded:—

"The committee are aware that it will not immediately be understood

by the public how the proprietors of a railroad, requiring an invested
capital of £400,000 can afford to carry goods at so great a reduction
upon the charge of the present water companies. But the problem is
easily solved. It is not that the water companies have not been able
to carry goods on reasonable terms, but that, strong in the
enjoyment of their monopoly, they have not thought proper to do so.
Against the most arbitrary exactions the public have hitherto had no
protection, and against the indefinite continuance or recurrence of
the evil they have but one security. It is competition that is wanted,
and the proof of this assertion may be adduced from the fact that
shares in the Old Quay Navigation, of which the original cost was
£70, have been sold as high as £1250 each!"

The canal interests in general had, however, anticipated the definite

challenge thus given, and there had already been a call to arms in
defence of common interests. In a postscript to the prospectus just
referred to it was mentioned that the Leeds and Liverpool, the
Birmingham, the Grand Trunk and other canal companies had issued
circulars calling upon "every canal and navigation company in the
Kingdom to oppose in limine, and by a united effort, the
establishment of railroads wherever contemplated."[39]

By this time, therefore, the projectors of the Liverpool and

Manchester Railway were threatened with the opposition, not alone
of the Bridgewater trustees and of the Old Quay Navigation trustees,
but of the canal and river navigation interests throughout the
country. As Thomas Baines well describes the position in his "History
of Liverpool," "The canal proprietors, with an instinctive sense of
danger, justly appreciated what they affected to despise, and, with
one accord, and with one heart and mind, resolved to crush the rival
project which threatened to interrupt, if not to destroy the hopes of
prescription and the dreams of a sanguine avarice."

The real strength of the opposition thus being worked up against not
only the Liverpool and Manchester Railway but public railways in
general will be better understood if I supplement the references I
have already made to the shares of canal and navigation companies
by a few further figures, showing the financial position to which the
waterways had attained, and the extent of the vested interests they
represented at the particular period now in question.

In a pamphlet published in 1824, under the title of "A Statement of

the Claim of the Subscribers to the Birmingham and Liverpool Rail-
road to an Act of Parliament; in reply to the Opposition of the Canal
Companies" (quoted in the fifth, or 1825, edition of Thomas Gray's
"Observations on a General Iron Rail-way"), it is stated that the
amount of capital originally subscribed for the old Birmingham Canal
Company was about £55,000, in shares of £100, subject to a
stipulation that no one person should hold more than ten shares.
The pamphlet proceeds:—

"By various subsequent Acts and collateral cuts, this canal, which
has now changed its name to the style of the 'Birmingham Canal
Navigation Company,' is extended to a distance of about 60 miles of
water, containing 99 locks or thereabouts, 10 fire engines to raise
water, number of bridges not known to the present writer.

"The original shares are computed to have cost the proprietors £140
each. In 1782 they were marketably worth £370, and in 1792,
£1110. In 1811 an Act increased the shares 500 to 1000, or, in other
words, for marketable convenience divided them. In 1813 the half
share was sold as high as £585. In 1818 power was given to the
company of proprietors further to subdivide the shares as they
should deem advisable, on due public notice, etc. The shares are
now in eighths. Thus at the present time, and at the last quoted
prices in Wetenhall's list, there are 4000 shares of eighths,
marketably worth £360 per eighth, each receiving an annual
dividend of £12-10-0. Thus the original cost, compared with the
present value of the 500 shares, is as £70,000 to £1,444,000, the
original share having risen from £140 sterling (or thereabouts) to the
sum of £2840."

Shares in the Loughborough Navigation cost the first holders £142-

17-0 each. In the "European Magazine" for June, 1821, they are
quoted at £2600 a share, and the dividend then being paid is given
as 170 per cent. In the issue of the same magazine for November,
1824, the price per share is £4700, and the dividend is shown to
have risen to 200 per cent.
Among other canal shares quoted in the "European Magazine" for
the dates mentioned are the following:—

1821 1824
COMPANY. SHARE. PRICE. DIVIDEND. PRICE. DIVIDEND.
£ £ £ £ £
Coventry 100 970 44 1350 44 and 61
Erewash 100 1000 56 — 58
Leeds and Liverpool 100 280 10 570 15
Oxford 100 630 32 900 32*
Staffordshire and 100 700 40 950 40
Worcestershire
Trent and Mersey 200 1750 75 2250 75*
* And bonus.

The following further quotations are from "Wetenhall's Commercial

List" for December 10, 1824:—

COMPANY. SHARE. PRICE. DIVIDEND.

£ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d.
Ashton and Oldham 97 18 0 310 0 0 5 0 0
Barnsley 160 0 0 340 0 0 12 0 0
Grand Junction 100 0 0 296 0 0 10 0 0
Glamorganshire 172 13 4 280 0 0 13 12 8
Grantham 150 0 0 190 0 0 10 0 0
Leicester 140 0 0 390 0 0 14 0 0
Monmouthshire 100 0 0 245 0 0 10 0 0
Melton Mowbray 100 0 0 255 0 0 11 0 0
Mersey and Irwell — 1000 0 0 35 0 0
Neath 100 0 0 400 0 0 15 0 0
Shrewsbury 125 0 0 206 0 0 10 0 0
Stourbridge 145 0 0 220 0 0 10 10 0
Stroudwater 150 0 0 450 0 0 31 10 0
Trent and Mersey 100 0 0 2300 0 0 75 0 0*
(half share)
 Warwick and 100 0 0 320 0 0 11 0 0
Birmingham
Warwick and Knapton 100 0 0 280 0 0 11 0 0
* And bonus.

These figures, it will be seen, are given for years when the "canal
mania"—at its height between 1791 and 1794—had long been over,
and they suggest, therefore, bona fide market values based on
business done and dividends paid. High as they are, it is doubtful if
they tell the whole story. I have mentioned on page 218 that in their
petition to the House of Commons against the proposed railway, or
tramway, between Merthyr and Cardiff, the Glamorganshire Canal
Company represented that they were restrained by their Act from
paying more than a "moderate" dividend. The dividend they were
authorised to pay was one of eight per cent; but there is a tradition
in South Wales that the company, after checking effectively the
threatened railway competition, attained to phenomenal prosperity,
and resorted to an ingenious expedient as a means of deriving
further pecuniary advantage from the waterway without exceeding
the statutory limitation in regard to the dividend to be paid. This
expedient took the form of a suspension of all tolls for a large part of
every year, the use of the canal being free to the public for the
period so arranged. In some years, it is said, no tolls were paid for
six months at a time. This practice was found preferable, for certain
members of the managing committee—ironmasters or large traders
in the district—to a reduction of tolls to be in force throughout the
year, their practice being to keep back their own consignments,
whenever possible, till the free period, which they could fix to suit
their convenience. When the principal shareholders were traders
using the canal, it did not matter to them whether their profits came
wholly in dividends or partly in dividends and partly in free carriage.
Traders, however, who could not wait for their supplies or store their
manufactured goods until the free period came round had to pay the
full rates of tolls for, at least, the period during which these were
enforced.
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