"I found delight," said Sir Richard, in his book published in 1813, "in witnessing at Wandsworth the economy of horse labor on the iron railway. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me as I thought of the inconceivable millions of money which have been spent about Malta, four or five of which might have been the means of extending double lines of iron railway from London to Edinburg, Glasgow, Holyhead, Milford, Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover, and Portsmouth. A reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches and other vehicles, of various degrees of speed, with the best tackle for readily turning out; and we might, ere this, have witnessed our mail-coaches running at the rate of ten miles an hour drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen miles an hour by Blenkinsop's steam-engine. Such would have been a legitimate motive for over-stepping the income of a nation, and the completion of so great and useful a work would have afforded rational ground for public triumph in general jubilee." There was, however, as yet, no general recognition of the advantages either of railways or locomotives. The government of this country never leads in any work of public enterprise, and is usually rather a drag upon industrial operations than otherwise. As for the general public, it was enough for them that the Wandsworth and Croydon Railway did not pay. Mr. Tredgold, in his "Practical Treatise on Railroads and Carriages," published in 1825, observes: "Up to this period railways have been employed with success only in the conveyance of heavy mineral products, and for short distances where immense quantities were to be conveyed. In the few instances where they have been intended for the general purposes of trade, they have never answered the expectations of their projectors. But this seems to have arisen altogether from following too closely the models adopted for the conveyance of minerals, such modes of forming and using railways not being at all adapted for the general purposes of trade." The ill success of railways was generally recognized. Joint-stock companies for all sorts of purposes were formed during the joint-stock mania of 1821, but few projectors were found daring enough to propose schemes so unpromising as railways. Hence nearly twenty years passed between the construction of the first and the second public railway in England; and this brings us to the projection of the Stockton and Darlington, which may be regarded as the parent public locomotive railway in the kingdom.