The last mentioned line was projected as early as the year 1824, when the Liverpool and Manchester scheme was under discussion, and Mr. Stephenson then published a report on the subject. The plans were deposited, but the bill was thrown out through the opposition of the landowners and canal proprietors. When engaged in making the survey, Stephenson called upon some of the landowners in the neighbourhood of Nantwich to obtain their assent, and was greatly disgusted to learn that the agents of the canal companies had been before him, and described the locomotive to the farmers as a most frightful machine, emitting a breath as poisonous as the fabled dragon of old; and telling them that if a bird flew over the district where one of these engines passed, it would inevitably drop down dead! The application for the bill was renewed in 1826, and again failed; and at length it was determined to wait the issue of the Liverpool and Manchester experiment. The act was eventually obtained in 1833. When it was proposed to extend the advantages of railways to the population of the midland and southern counties of England, an immense amount of alarm was created in the minds of the country gentlemen. They did not relish the idea of private individuals, principally resident in the manufacturing districts, invading their domains; and they everywhere rose up in arms against the “new-fangled roads.” Colonel Sibthorpe openly declared his hatred of the “infernal railroads,” and said that he “would rather meet a highwayman, or see a burglar on his premises, than an engineer!” The impression which prevailed in the rural districts was, that fox-covers and game-preserves would be seriously prejudiced by the formation of railroads; that agricultural communications would be destroyed, land thrown out of cultivation, landowners and farmers reduced to beggary, the poor-rates increased through the number of persons thrown out of employment by the railways,—and all this in order that Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham shopkeepers and manufacturers might establish a monstrous monopoly in railway traffic.