Majesty's revenues: for now four or five travel in a coach together, without any servants, and it is they that occasion the consumption of beer and ale on the roads; and all inn-keepers do declare that they sell not half the drink nor pay the king half the excise they did before these coaches set up."[268] Such was the conservative bill of indictment against stage-coaches. The history of canals, of steamboats, and, lastly, of railways, shows similar prejudices. Even Mr. Jefferson (and I cannot mention him as an immoderate conservative), when told that the State of New York had explored the route of a canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie, and found it practicable,--that same canal which now, like a thread of silver, winds its way through your imperial State,--replied, that "it was a very fine project, and might be executed a century hence." This is only a little better than the observation of the Greenwich pensioners, who, on first seeing the steamboat upon the waters of the Thames, as they looked out from their palatial home, said, "We do not like the steamboat, it is so contrary to Nature." In our own country, Fitch brought forward the idea of a steamboat amidst ill-disguised sneers; and at a later day, Fulton, while building his first experiment at New York, was viewed with indifference or contempt, as a visionary; and when, at last, he accomplished the long distance to Albany, distrust of the Future still prevailed, and it was doubted if the voyage could be accomplished again, or, if successful again, it was still doubted if the invention could be of permanent value. Thus did this evil spirit perplex noble aims! And in England, as late as 1825, railways were pronounced "altogether delusions and impositions," and the conservative "Quarterly Review," alluding to the opinion of certain engineers that the railway engine could go eighteen or twenty miles an hour, says: "These gross exaggerations may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification of those concerned.... We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate."[269] [268] The Grand Concern of England, 1673: Harleian Miscellany, Vol. VIII. pp. 539, 540.