Thus ended this memorable contest, which had extended over two months--carried on throughout with great pertinacity and skill, especially on the part of the opposition, who left no stone unturned to defeat the measure. The want of a new line of communication between Liverpool and Manchester had been clearly proved; but the engineering evidence in support of the proposed railway having been thrown almost entirely upon George Stephenson, who fought this, the most important part of the battle, single-handed, was not brought out so clearly as it would have been had he secured more efficient engineering assistance, which he was not able to do, as all the engineers of eminence of that day were against the locomotive railway. The obstacles thrown in the way of the survey by the land-owners and canal companies, by which the plans were rendered exceedingly imperfect, also tended in a great measure to defeat the bill. Mr. Gooch says the rejection of the scheme was probably the most severe trial George Stephenson underwent in the whole course of his life. The circumstances connected with the defeat of the bill, the errors in the levels, his severe cross-examination, followed by the fact of his being superseded by another engineer, all told fearfully upon him, and for some time he was as terribly weighed down as if a personal calamity of the most serious kind had befallen him. It is also right to add that he was badly served by his surveyors, who were unpracticed and incompetent. On the 27th of September, 1824, we find him writing to Mr. Sandars: "I am quite shocked with Auty's conduct; we must throw him aside as soon as possible. Indeed, I have begun to fear that he has been fee'd by some of the canal proprietors to make a botch of the job. I have a letter from Steele,[61] whose views of Auty's conduct quite agree with yours." The result of this first application to Parliament was so far discouraging. Stephenson had been so terribly abused by the leading counsel for the opposition in the course of the proceedings before the committee--stigmatized by them as an ignoramus, a fool, and a maniac--that even his friends seem for a time to have lost faith in him and in the locomotive system, whose efficiency he continued to uphold. Things never looked blacker for the success of the railway system than at the close of this great Parliamentary struggle. And yet it was on the very eve of its triumph.