Conspicuous among these is the self-interest of landowners. Once the greatest obstacles to railway enterprise, owners of estates have of late years been among its chief promoters. Since the Liverpool and Manchester line was first defeated by landed opposition, and succeeded with its second bill only by keeping out of sight of all mansions, and avoiding game preserves—since the time when the London and Birmingham Company, after seeing their project thrown out by a committee of peers who ignored the evidence, had to “conciliate” opponents by raising the estimate for land from £250,000 to £750,000—since the time when Parliamentary counsel justified resistance by the flimsiest excuses, even to reproaching engineers with having “trodden down the corn of widows” and “destroyed the strawberry-beds of gardeners”—since then, a marked change of policy has taken place. Nor was it in human nature that it should be otherwise. When it became known that railway-companies commonly paid for “land and compensation,” sums varying from £4000 to £8000 per mile; that men were indemnified for supposed injury to their property, by sums so inordinate that the greater part has been known to be returned by the heir as conscience-money; that in one case £120,000 was given for land said to be worth but £5000—when it was noised abroad that large bonuses in the shape of preference shares and the like, were granted to buy off opposition—when it came to be an established fact that estates are greatly enhanced in value by the proximity of railways; it is not surprising that country gentlemen should have become active friends of schemes to which they were once the bitterest enemies. On considering the many temptations, we shall see nothing wonderful in the fact that in 1845 they were zealous {64} provisional committee-men; nor in the fact that their influence as promoters enabled them to get large sums for their own acres. If we are told of squires soliciting interviews with the engineer of a projected railway; prompting him to take their side of the country; promising support if he did, and threatening opposition if he did not; dictating the course to be followed through their domains; and hinting that a good price would be expected; we are simply told of the special modes in which certain private interests show themselves. If we hear of an extensive landowner using his influence as chairman of a board of directors, to project a branch running for many miles through his own estate, and putting his company to the cost of a parliamentary contest to carry this line; we hear only of that which was likely to occur under such circumstances. If we find now before the public, a line proposed by a large capitalist, serving among other ends to effect desirable communications with his property, and the estimates for which line, though considered by the engineering world insufficient, are alleged by him to be ample; we have