Toll for a knave! A knave whose day is o'er! All sunk--with those who gave Their cash, till they'd no more!
The _Royal George_ is gone, His iron rule is o'er-- And he and his directors Shall break the lines no more!
In the same vein are the proposals that Hudson should be the chief "Guy" on November 5, and be appointed governor of a convict settlement on the Isle of Dogs. Simultaneously improvements are noted in the quickening of the transit to Paris, the increase of excursions, and the beginning of _voyages de luxe_.
But the note of complaint and dissatisfaction prevails. The discomfort, danger, unpunctuality and discourtesy endured by railway passengers are rubbed in with wearisome reiteration. In 1852 _Punch_ ironically comments on the patience of the British public, "content to travel in railway pens, like sheep to the slaughter, injured, deluded, derided, only bleating in return," and concludes his summary of recent protests from correspondents of _The Times_ with the remark:--
Railway accidents, railway frauds, railway impertinence are the staple of our daily newspaper-reading. Railway chairmen and directors are descending to the knavery, extortion, impudence, and brutality from which cabmen are rising in the scale of manners and morals. And, as aforesaid, the British public stands all this with passive mournfulness, quiet endurance, meek, inactive expostulation.
TOUTER: "Allow me, then, to give you one of my cards, Sir."]
The directors of the L. & N.W.R. are severely criticised for overworking their engine drivers, _à propos_ of a well-authenticated case of a man who had been on duty for thirty hours without relief or opportunity to rest. "If dividends demand economy, and economy necessitates the employment of one man to do the work of six, the only thing to be done for public safety is to get a man with an iron constitution," and _Punch_ accordingly suggests that the directors should provide themselves with engine drivers entirely composed of that metal. Complaints of dangerous railways continue to the end of the period under review, and in 1856 _Punch_ is still of opinion that we might take a leaf out of the book of the Russians, who carry surgeons on their trains. Undertakers he had already suggested as a part of the normal equipment of expresses.