A public meeting was then held to consider the best plan to be adopted, and resolutions were passed in favor of a railroad. A committee was appointed to take the necessary measures; but, as if reluctant to enter upon their arduous struggle with the "vested interests," they first waited on Mr. Bradshaw, the Duke of Bridgewater's canal agent, in the hope of persuading him to increase the means of conveyance, as well as to reduce the charges; but they were met by an unqualified refusal. He would not improve the existing means of conveyance; he would have nothing to do with the proposed railway; and, if persevered in, he would oppose it with all his power. The canal proprietors, confident in their imagined security, ridiculed the proposed railway as a chimera. It had been spoken about years before, and nothing had come of it then; it would be the same now. In order to form a better opinion as to the practicability of the railroad, a deputation of gentlemen interested in the project proceeded to Killingworth to inspect the engines which had been so long in use there. They first went to Darlington, where they found the works of the Stockton line in progress, though still unfinished. Proceeding next to Killingworth with George Stephenson, they there witnessed the performances of his locomotive engines. The result of their visit was, on the whole, so satisfactory, that on their return to Liverpool it was determined to form a company of the proprietors for the construction of a double line of railway between Liverpool and Manchester. The original promoters of the undertaking included men of the highest standing and local influence in Liverpool and Manchester, with Charles Lawrence as chairman, Lister Ellis, Robert Gladstone, John Moss, and Joseph Sandars as deputy chairmen; while among the ordinary members of the committee were Robert Benson, James Cropper, John Ewart, Wellwood Maxwell, and William Rathbone, of Liverpool, and the brothers Birley, Peter Ewart, William Garnett, John Kennedy, and William Potter, of Manchester. The committee also included another important name--that of Henry Booth, then a corn-merchant of Liverpool, and afterward the secretary and manager of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Mr. Booth was a man of admirable business qualities, sagacious and far-seeing, shrewd and practical, of considerable literary ability, and he also possessed a knowledge of mechanics, which afterward proved of the greatest value to the railway interest; for to him we owe the suggestion of the multitubular boiler in the form in which it has since been employed upon all railways, and the coupling-screw, as well as other important mechanical appliances which have come into general use.