Mr. Huskisson and other speakers, though unable to reply to such arguments as these, strongly supported the bill, and it was carried on the third reading by a majority of eighty-eight to forty-one. The bill passed the House of Lords almost unanimously, its only opponents being the Earl of Derby and his relative the Earl of Wilton. The cost of obtaining the act amounted to the enormous sum of £27,000. FOOTNOTES: [60] George's Northumberland "burr" was so strong that it rendered him almost unintelligible to persons who were unfamiliar with it; and he had even thoughts of going to school again, for the purpose, if possible, of getting rid of it. In the year 1823, when Stephenson was forty-two years of age, we find his friend Thomas Richardson, of Lombard Street, writing to Samuel Thoroughgood, a schoolmaster at Peckham, as follows: "DEAR FRIEND,--My friend George Stephenson, a man of first-rate abilities as an engineer, but of little or no education, wants to consult thee or some other person to see if he can not improve himself--he has so much Northumberland dialect, etc. He will be at my house on sixth day next, about five o'clock, if thou could make it convenient to see him. Thy assured friend, THOS. RICHARDSON." [61] Hugh Steele and Elijah Galloway afterward proceeded with the survey at one part of the line, and Messrs. Oliver and Blackett at another. The former couple seem to have made some grievous blunder in the levels on Chat Moss, and the circumstance weighed so heavily on Steele's mind that, shortly after hearing of the rejection of the bill, he committed suicide in Stephenson's office at Newcastle. Mr. Gooch informs us that this unhappy affair served to impress upon the minds of Stephenson's other pupils the necessity of insuring greater accuracy and attention in future, and that the lesson, though sad, was not lost upon them. CHAPTER XI. CHAT MOSS--CONSTRUCTION OF THE RAILWAY.