In March, 1825, there appeared in the pages of the _Quarterly Review_ an article in which the writer discussed that railway system, the first vague anticipation of which was then just beginning to make the world restless. He did this, too, in a very intelligent and progressive spirit, but unfortunately secured for his article a permanence of interest he little expected by the use of one striking illustration. He was peculiarly anxious to draw a distinct line of demarcation between his own very rational anticipations and the visionary dreams of those enthusiasts who were boring the world to death over the impossibilities which they claimed that the new invention was to work. Among these he referred to the proposition that passengers would be "whirled at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour by means of a high pressure engine," and then contemptuously added,--"We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off upon one of Congreve's _ricochet_ rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine, going at such a rate; their property perhaps they may trust."
Under the circumstances, the criticism was a perfectly reasonable one. The danger involved in going at such a rate of speed and the impossibility of stopping in time to avoid a sudden danger, would naturally suggest themselves to any one as insuperable objections to the new system for any practical use. Some means of preserving a sudden and powerful control over a movement of such unheard of rapidity would almost as a matter of course be looked upon as a condition precedent. Yet it is a most noticeable fact in the history of railroad development that the improvement in appliances for controlling speed by no means kept pace with the increased rate of speed attained. Indeed, so far as the possibility of rapid motion is concerned, there is no reason to suppose that the _Rocket_ could not have held its own very respectably by the side of a passenger locomotive of the present day. It will be remembered that on the occasion of the Manchester & Liverpool opening, Mr. Huskisson after receiving his fatal injury was carried seventeen miles in twenty-five minutes. Since then the details of locomotive construction have been simplified and improved upon, but no great change has been or probably will be effected in the matter of velocity;--as respects that the maximum was practically reached at once. Yet down to the year 1870 the brake system remained very much what it was in 1830. Improvements in detail were effected, but the essential principles were the same. In case of any sudden emergency, the men in charge of the locomotive had no direct control over the vehicles in the train; they communicated with them by the whistle, and when the signal was heard the brakes were applied as soon as might be. When a train is moving at the rate of forty miles an hour, by no means a great speed for it while in full motion, it passes over fifty-eight feet each second;--at sixty miles an hour it passes over eighty-eight feet. Under these circumstances, supposing an engine driver to become suddenly aware of an obstruction on the track, as was the case at Revere, or of something wrong in the train behind him, as at Shipton, he had first himself to signal danger, and to this signal the brakemen throughout the train had to respond. Each operation required time, and every second of time represented many feet of space. It was small matter for surprise, therefore, that when in 1875 they experimented scientifically in England, it was ascertained that a train of a locomotive and thirteen cars moving at a speed of forty-five miles an hour could not be brought to a stand in less than one minute, or before it had traversed a distance of half a mile. The same result it will be remembered was arrived at by practical experience in America, where both at Angola and at Port Jervis,[22] it was found impossible to stop the trains in less than half-a-mile, though in each case two derailed cars were dragging and plunging along at the end of them.