Undermined by land, overmined at sea, sluice-ridden at its entrance, and liable to asphyxiating vapors at intervals, the Tunnel will hardly be regarded by nervous travellers as a very pleasant alternative even to the horrors of seasickness.... The whole system of defense must forever be at the mercy of blunderers, criminals, and madmen. It is true that we take somewhat similar risks in ordinary railway travelling, but imagination counts for a good deal in such matters, and the terrors of the Channel Tunnel under an adequate system of defense might easily affect the imagination so strongly as to render the terrors of seasickness insignificant by comparison. Caught between the forces of claustrophobia and xenophobia, Sir Edward Watkin's great tunnel project was just about done for. In Westminster, angry citizens exhibited their feelings by smashing all the windows of the Channel Tunnel Company offices there. In the following year, the promised new investigation into the tunnel question was undertaken by a joint Parliamentary committee presided over by Lord Landsdowne. The committee met fourteen times, examined forty witnesses, and asked them fifty-three hundred and ninety-six questions. Not unexpectedly, the witnesses included Sir Garnet Wolseley, now Lord Wolseley. That Lord Wolseley in the interim had not changed his opinions on the perilous consequences of a tunnel is evident from his response to just five of the hundreds of questions put to him by the committee members. 5233: ... I think you said that supposing anyone in this room were to go to the barrack gates [at any of the forts at Dover at night] and to knock at the door, the door would at once be opened?—The wicket would be opened to you. 5234: Would it be the case if the person who went there had a hundred men in his company?—The man inside would not know that he had them, he would never suspect a hundred men being outside; but I would go further and say, even supposing that he would not open the barrack gates, the barrack gates are very easily knocked in. 5235: Are there any drawbridges there?—There are, but they are very seldom, if ever, drawn up in Dover. 5236: You said that if the tunnel were in existence, it would be necessary that the conditions of life in Dover should be altered; would that be one of the conditions which would be altered?—Yes. 5237: And the drawbridges would be up at night?—The drawbridges would be up at night, and nobody would be allowed to go in or out after a certain hour. When all the evidence was in, a majority of the joint Parliamentary committee sided with the views of Lord Wolseley and voted against any Parliamentary sanction's being given to a Channel tunnel.