It
was not an easy task for me to keep the engine down to ten miles
an hour, but it must be done, and I did my best. I had to place
myself in that most unpleasant of all positions--the witness-box
of a parliamentary committee. I was not long in it before I began
to wish for a hole to creep out at! I could not find words to
satisfy either the committee or myself. I was subjected to the
cross-examination of eight or ten barristers, purposely, as far
as possible, to bewilder me. Some member of the committee asked
if I was a foreigner, and another hinted that I was mad. But I
put up with every rebuff, and went on with my plans, determined
not to be put down."
George Stephenson stood before the committee to prove what the
public opinion of that day held to be impossible. The self-taught
mechanic had to demonstrate the practicability of accomplishing
that which the most distinguished engineers of the time regarded
as impracticable. Clear though the subject was to himself, and
familiar as he was with the powers of the locomotive, it was no
easy task for him to bring home his convictions, or even to
convey his meaning, to the less informed minds of his hearers. In
his strong Northumbrian dialect, he struggled for utterance, in
the face of the sneers, interruptions, and ridicule of the
opponents of the measure, and even of the committees, some of
whom shook their heads and whispered doubts as to his sanity when
he energetically avowed that he could make the locomotive go at
the rate of twelve miles an hour! It was so grossly in the teeth
of all the experience of honorable members, that the man "must
certainly be laboring under a delusion!"
And yet his large experience of railways and locomotives, as
described by himself to the committee, entitled this "untaught,
inarticulate genius," as he has been described, to speak with
confidence on the subject.
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