CHAPTER VIII.

Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 216, 30 August 1878, Page 7

CHAPTER VIII.

Amongst tbe curiosities of human ; reasoning is tbis : one forms a judg- ; ment on certain statements; they turn out incorrect, yet the judgment sound. : Tbis occurs ofteue?t when, to divine : what any krowu person will do in a . case stated, we go boldly by bis character, bis habits or bis interest: ior these : are great forces, towards which men : gravitate through various and even contrary circumstances. Wow women, sitting at home out of detail's way, are somewhat forced, as well os naturally inclined, to rely on their insight into character, and by this broad clue often pass through false or discoloured data to a sound calculation. Thus it was Mrs Dodd applied her native sagacity to divine why Richard Hardie declined Julia for his so a's wife, and how to make bim withdraw that disseDt : and the fair diviner was mucb mistaken in detail but right in her conclusion; for Richard Hardie was at that moment the unlikeiiest man in Barkington to decline Julia Dodd — with Hard Cash in five figures — for his daughter-in-law. I lam now about to make a revelation | to the reader, that will incidentally lead i him to Mrs Dodd's conclusions, but by a different path. The outline she gave her daughter and my reader of Richard Bardie's cold and prudent youth was substantially correct, but something bad occurred since then, unknown to ber, unknown to all Barking ton. Tbe centuries had blown a respectable bubble. About 250 years ago some genius, as unknown ns the inventor of the lathe, laid the first wooden tram road, to enable a horse to draw forty-two cwt. instead ol seventeen. The coalowners soon used it largely. In 1788 iron rails were invented ; but prejudice, stronger than that metal, kept them down, and tbe wooden ones in vogue, for some thirty years. Then iron prevailed. Meantime a much greater invention bad been creeping up to join the metal way : I mean the locomotive power of steam, whose history is not needed bere. Enough tbat in 1804 took place as promising a weddiogascivilisationeversaw; for then an engine built by Trevethicb, a great genius fritiered^ for wout of pluck, drew carriages, laden with ten tons, five miles an hour on a Welsh I railway. Next stout Stephenson came on the scene, and insisted on benefiting { , mankind in spite of themselves, find of ;

shallow legislators, a priori reasouers. ancl a heavy Review, whose political raotio was 'Stem us super antiquas via?," which may be rendered - c Better stand stilt on turnpikes than move oa rails/

His torments and triumph are history. Two of his repartees seem neat : 1. To Lord Noodle, or Lord Doodle, which was it ? objeccing haughtily, ' And suppose a cow should get in tbe way of your engine, sir V he replied ' Why thee it would be bad — for the coow/ The objector had overrated the obstructive power of his honoured parent. — 2, To the & priori reasoners, who sat in their studies and demonstrated witb. complete unanimity that uncogged wheels would revolve oa a smooth rail, but leave tbe carriage in statu quo, he replied by building an engtne with Lord Ravensworth's noble aid, hooking on eight carriages, and rattling off up an incline. ' Solvittirambulando/ quoth Stephenson tbe stout-hearted. Nest a coach ran on tbe Stockton and Darlington rail. Nest the Liverpool and Manchester line was projected. Oh then wbat bitter opposition to the national benefactors and the good of man ! Awake from tbe tomb echoes of dead Cant. ' The revolving wheels might move the engine on the rail; but what would that avail if they could move tbem in the closet, and on a mathematical paper ? Railways would be bad for canals, bad for morals, bad for highwaymen, bad for roadside ions : the smoke would kill the partridges (" Aha ! Thou bast touched us nearly/ 1 said tbe country gentlemen), the travellers would go slowly to their destination, but swift to destruction/ And the Heavy Review,, whose motto was ' Stemus super turnpikes,' offered 'to back old Father Thames against tbe Woolwich railway for any sum/ And Black Will, wbo drove tbe next heaviest ephemeral in tbe island, told a schoolboy, who now writes these pages, ' theie's nothing can ever be safe at twenty miles an hour, without 'tis a bird in the air / and confirmed it with an oath. Briefly, busz ! buzz ! buzz ! Gray was crushed, Treve thick driven oat ot the country, stout S tee vie thwarted, badgered, taunted, and even insulted, and bespattered with dirt, I might say with dung ; since his opponents discharged their own brains at him by speech and writing. At last, when after the manner of men tbey bad manured their benefactor well, they consented to reap hitn. Railways prevailed, and increased, till io aud behold a prime minister witb a spade delving one in the valley of the Trent. The tide turned; good working ia.ilwa.ys from city to city became an improved investment of genuine capital ; notwithstanding the frightful frauds and extortion to which the projectors were exposed in a parliament, which, under a new temptation showed itself as corrupt and greedy as any nation or age can parallel.

Wben this sober state of things bad | endured some time, there came a year j •that money was loose, and a speculative j fever due in tbe wbulgig of time. Then ' railways bubbled, New ones were advertised, fifty a month, and all went to ' a premium. High and low scrambled for the shares, even wben the projected hne was to run from tbe town ol Nought to the village of Nothing across a goose common. The flame spread, fanned by prospectus and advertisement, two mines of glowing fiction, compared with which the legitimate article is a mere tissue of understatements. Princes sat in railway tenders, and clove the air like tbe birds whose effigies surmount their armorials ; our stir Test Peers relaxed into Boards ; Bishops warned their clergy against avarice, and buttered Hudson an inch thick for shares., and turned their little aprons into great pockets; men, stainless hitherto, put down their infants, nurses included, as independent subscribers, and bagged the coupons, capturi lartaros. Nearly everything that had a name, and by some immense fortuity could write it, demanded its part in the new and fathomless source of wealth : a charwoman's two sons were living in a garret on 15s apiece per week; down went their excellencies' names for L 37,000 worth ot bubbling iron ; another shareholder applied imperiously from a house in Grosveoor Square; he had break'a^ted on the steps. Richard Hardie had some money in existing railways; but he declined to invest bis bard cash upon hypothetical. He waa repeatedly solicited to be a director; but always declined. Once i he was offered a canny bribe of a thousand pounds to let bis name go on a provisional committee. H e refused with a characteristic remark ; ' I never buy any merchandise at a fancy price, not even bard cash/

Antidote to tbe universal mania, Barking-ton bud this one wet blanket : an unpopular institution ; but far more salutary than a damp sheet, especially in time ot Bubble.

Nearly ail bis customers consulted Richard Hardie, aDd this vvas the substance of his replies : ' The Bubbles of History, including tbe great one of my youib, were naiional, as well as individual follies. It is not so now : the failways, that mm their allottees and directors, will -be pure uddbioos to tbe national property, and some day remove one barrier more from commerce. Tbe Dutch tulip frenzy vteut on a petty fancy; the Railway fury goes on ;• great fact. Our predecessors blew mere

snr.p bubbles ; we bluvy an iron bubble : but- here iiie distinction ends; in 1835 tbe country undertook immediate en•rngyraenis, to fulfil which a century's income wou'd not nave sufficed: to-day a thousand railway companies are registered, requiring a capital of six hundred million ; and another thousand projected, to cost another five hundred million. Where is the mouey to come from? If tbe world was both cultivated and civilised (instead of neither), aad this nation, could be sold, with every building, ship, quadruped, jewel, and marketable female in it. it would not fetch the money to make these railways; yet tbe country undertakes to create them ia three years xvlih ite floating capital. Arithmetic of Bedlam ! The thing cannot last a year without collapsing/ Richard Hardie talked like this from first to last. But. whoa he saw that shares invariably mounted; tbat even those who, for want of interest, had to buy them at a premium, sold them at a profit ; when be saw paupers making large fortunes in a few months, by buying into every venture and selling the next week ; he itched for his share of the booty, and determined to profit in act by the credulity of mankind, as well as expose it in words. He raado use of his large connexions to purchase shares ; which he took care to part with speedily ; be cleared a good deal of money, nnd that made him hungrier: be went deeper and deeper into what ho called Flat catching, till he stood to win thirty thousand pounds at a coup. But it is dangerous to be a convert, veal or false, to Bubble: tbe game is to be rash at once, and turn prudent at the full tide, When Kiclmrd Hardie was up to bis. chin in these time bargains, came an incident not easy to foresee. : the conductors of Tho Times, either from patriotism, or long-sighted policy, punctured the bladder, though they were making thousands weekly hy the railway advertisements. The ibne was so well chesen, and the pin applied, that it was a death-blow : shaves declined from that morning, and the inevitable panic was advanced a week or two. The more credulous speculators held oo in hopes ofa revival ; but Hardie, who knew that the collapse had been merely hastened, saw the gravity of the situation, and sold largely at a heavy loss. But he could not sell aii the bad paper be bad accumulated for a temporary purpose : tbe panic came too swiftly, and too strong ; soon there were no buyers at any price. The biter waa bit; the fox who had said f This is a trap; I'll lightly come and lightly go/ was caught by the light fantastic 'toe. J n this emergency he, snowed high qualities; vast financial ability, great fordlude, and that sense of commercial honour which Mrs Dodd justly called his semi - chivalrous sentiment. He mustered all his private resources to meet his engagements, and maintain his high positiou. Then commenced a long and steady struggle, conducted with a Spartan dignity and self-com-mand, and a countenance as close as was. Little did any in Barkingtpn guess the doubts and fears, the hopes aod despondencies, wbich agitated and tore the heart and brain that schemed, and throbbed, and glowed, and sickened by turns, beneath that steady modulated exterior. And so for months and months he secretly battled with insolvency ; sometimes it threatened in the distance, sometimes at band, but never caught bim unawares : he provided for each cominsr danger, be encountered each immediate attack. But not uuscatbed in morals. Just ns matters looked brighter, came a concentration of liabilities be could not meet without emptying bis tills, and so incurring tbe most frightful danger of all. He bad provided for its coming too; but a decline, greater than be had reckoned on, in the value of bis good securities, made that provision inadequate. Then it vvas he committed a faux-pa3. He was oue of his own children's trustees, and the other two signed alter bim like machines. He said to himself: 'My honour is my-cbiidren's ; my position is worth thousands to them. I have sacrificed a fortune to preserve it; it would be madness to Tecoil now/ He borrowed three thousand pounds of tbe trust money, and, soon after, two thousand more : it kept him above water ; but the peril, and tbe escape on such terms, left bim gasping inwardly.

At last, wben even his granite nature was almost worn down Witb labour, auxiety, and struggling all alone without a word ol comfort — lor the price of one grain of sympathy would have been '" Destruction 1 ' — he shuffled off bis hon burden, and breathed again. One day he spent in a sort of pleading lethargy, like a strong swimmer who, long and sore buffeted by the waves, has reached the shore at last. The next day bis cashier, a sharpvisaged, bald-headed old man called young Skinner, invited bis attention rather sigaificaatly to tbe b'gh amount ; of certain balances compared with the cash at his (Skinner's) disposal. ' Indeed !' said Hardie, quietly, * that must be regulated/ He added graciously, as if conferring a great favour, ' I'll look into tbe books myself, Skinner/ He did more; he sat up all night over the books; and his heart died wabia bim. Bankruptcy seemed coming towards bim, slow-perbaps7butsure. Ami mean time to live with the sword. hanging over him by a hair.!:' A . (To be CovMiAued.) , , !: