“The advantages of competition were pointed out, with the choicest phraseology. Lines which passed by barren districts, and by waste heaths, the termini of which were in uninhabitable places, reached a high premium. The shares of one company rose 2,400 per cent. Everything was to pay a large dividend; everything was to yield a large profit. One railway was to cross the entire Principality without a single curve. “The shares of another were issued, the company formed, and the directors appointed, with only the terminal points surveyed. In the Ely railway, not one person connected with the country through which it was to pass, subscribed the title deed. “The engineers who were examined in favour of particular lines, promised all and everything in their evidence. It was humourously said of them, ‘they plunge through the bowels of mountains; they undertake to drain lakes; they bridge valleys with viaducts; their steepest gradients are gentle undulations; their curves are lines of beauty; they interrupt no traffic; they touch no prejudice.’ “Labour of all kinds increased in demand. The price of iron rose from sixty-eight shillings to one-hundred-and-twenty per ton. Money remained abundant. Promoters received their tens and twenties of thousands. Rumours of sudden fortunes were very plentiful. Estates were purchased by those who were content with their gains; and, to crown the whole, a grave report was circulated, that Northumberland House, with its princely reminiscences, and palatial grandeur, was to be bought by the South Western. Many of the railways attained prices which staggered reasonable men. The more worthless the article, the greater seemed the struggle to obtain it. Premiums of £5 and £6 were matters of course, even where there were four or five competitors for the road. One company, which contained a clause to lease it at three-and-a-half per Cent., for 999 years, rose to twenty premium, so mad were the many to speculate.