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    lire a man to watch a line , it ought surely to use his eyes to their full power ; he could Bee forward and / backward , as well as right "before liiin , and should not telegraph " line dear" until he saw the line clear . The driver - of the express train is undoubtedly guilty . His instructions are , when he sees a danger signal , to pull up at the station that makes the signal . He could have seen the signal eight hundred yards from the station , and yet his train was only stopped

    the Great "Western , the South Western , and the South Eastern offer , through themselves and their respective allies , to convey the people to London at very cheap rates ; and one company comes down to something [ ess than a farthing a mile for second-class passengers ! Our managers * are rival undertakers ; our shareholders are dupes , and our passengers are parcels , sent at forty miles an hour .

    by the collision . The company ' s instructions presuppose that a driver seeing the signal could pull up at the signal station : either the instructions are founded on error or the driver did not look out for the signal in time . That he was making up for lost time is likely , but on . a line where a telegraph system is supposed to secure that no train passes until the line is cleai ' , the driver has no excuse for going beyond his proper speed : lie ought to have known that no train could overtake

    him . The original error that caused loss of time has also to be investigated . As to the driver of the coal train , we find him stopping for an engine bolt , although he knew , or ought to have knoyrn-, that an express train was behind him . He was slackening bis speed when passing' the signal hut , and had he then stopped to mend his engine , the express could have been signalled back at Boxmpor . To make a coal train precede an express by a few minutes , seems very bad management , and the culpability of the company is indicated pretty clearly by a

    reference to Bradshaw . The express train was due at TBoxnioor at 3 . 25 , and yet ten . minutes 'after that hour this coal train was allowed to creep along ! ] NTo system of telegraphs can compensate for direct violations of the commonest principles of precaution . In fact , it seems that the company , relying on their new plan of telegraphing back and forward , think they can send any number of trains on the line in time or out of time . The present rule has shown that signals will not avail where the traffic is covetously , overcrowded and unscrupulously intermixed .

    Bufc e the system is clearly in fault . We have express trains going so fast that no danger signal can stop them ; and we'have signal-men telegraphing that the line is clear before the preceding train is out of sight . Either , the instructions of the company are in fault , or the driver and signal-man are guilty of gross neglect . Another question suggests itself : Is there any necessity for trains at forty miles an hour ? Could not the journey between ^ London and Derby , even for lords and ladies "

    be properly done at thirty miles an hour—a pace that would ensure safety ? Tiia . ckeray says , not without reason , that " we do not travel now-a-days ; we arrive at places ; " and Uuskint , inhis late volume , says , that " railway travelling is not travelling at all ; it is merely being sent to a place , and very little different from becoming a parcel . " " We forbear to back Mr . Uustcin ' s philosophy against modern , progress ; hut when we find ourselves

    sent like a parcel ( only not " this side up , " nor " with care" ) , and flung against coal trains , we may consider whether such speed as forty miles an hour , with collisions , is not ¦ haste rather than despatch . The wear and tear of the rails , and of the rolling stock , is also another consideration which might influence railway proprietors . Bufc why talk ot proprietors ? They are the shareholders ,

    w , on some of our ' errand' linea . aro rew"o , on some of our ' grand' lines , aro receiving two per cent , dividend , or none at all , While the managers and secretaries of the rival railways carry on a keen competition , both as to speed and fare—keen enough to ¦ Keep the company alive and their own " salanes going . At " Rending , thrco companies compote for tho bodies of tho townsmen

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    THE EABLY CLOSERS . The impatient friends of the Early Closing Movement are asking for a parliamentary enactment to prohibit the carrying on of retail trades after eight o ' clock in the evening . A strong objection to such a proposal is the impossibility of giving effect to it ; but , as its authors are sincere , it is very desirable to divert them from the pursuit of a chimerical scheme , and to engage all the friends of the important reform in question in the support

    renewed confidence in the means already at their disposal . They say they have a majority ; if they lave obtained that without parliamentary help , they may surely hope to prevail with the dissentient minority .

    oi practical measures . A perusal of the address lately published by the Honorary Secretary of the Early Closing Association , will tend to dispossess their minds of the idea that little progress has been made , and that nothing can be effected with legislative intervention . A large majority of employers , Mr . LiLWAXXi reports , have assented to the principle of Early Closing . Only an inconsiderable minority resist it —a minority

    limited , in many cases , to one or two persons in each trade throughout an extensive district . Of course , the one argument of the non-content is , that late hours of business are profitable . The objection , that if young men enjoyed additional leisure they would employ it disreputably , is an impertinent pretence , or , at least , could only be sincerely urged by a man ' serenely unconscious that he is a fool . ' That children should be overtasked

    to keep them , out of mischief was a pre-railway idea ; but that young men and girls should be overworked for the same reason could be maintained by none but a scoffer or a dolfc . It is really charitable on the part of the secretary of the association , to suppose that controversialists of this class have feelings or senses to which he may successfully appeal . Of course , over-work is demoralizing ; of course , the assistant is as likely to profit by reasonable leisure as his employer . If the draper who said , " So intolerable was his condition that he often has wished that death

    itself would terminate his misery , " had been disposed to pass his time disreputably , why he had Sunday for his indulgence , and if he spent that day in ' desecration , ' it was , probably , because he spent tho other days of the week in servitude . Dr . Copland's opinion , that " excessive labour is only another term for sickness , suffering , and death ; " and Mr . GuAiNGEit's opinion , that " nearly threefourths of the diseases prevalent in the metropolis are ti-aceable to over-work , " may be taken as an antidote to the whole mass of prejudice existing in connexion with this subject .

    ¦ . The difficulty is to convince those shopkeepers who say that if they did not keep their shops open others would , and this is the class which solicits an act of Parliament . But the great remedy , in such a case , is in the hands of the public , which might be induced not only to adopt a habit of eai'ly purchases , but to discountenance thoso tradesmen who

    refuse to allow humanity to have any influence over their business affairs . It is encouraging to learn that so much progress has been made ; and it certainly is to bo deplored that a minority should stand in tho way of a great social reform . But , instead of being driven to the expedient of petitioning the Legislature for a compulsory law , -we think tho best friends of tho movement will go to work with

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    IMPERIAL STOCK-JOBBING . We find ourselves often compelled to retrace our steps , and to reproduce our words , in order to establish our relative positioa towardscertain of our contemporaries . Lately , Cayenne , the political penal settlement of the French Imperial Government , was discovered by one or two of our daily contemporaries , who are now beginning to discover the singular and alarming fact , that persons high in the councils of Lours Napoleon are addicted to stock-jobhing , and are even chargeable with making the ^ policy of Prance subservient to their operations on the Bourse . The

    semiorhcial Jray ' s indignantly repudiates the generous equivocation , of the Times which would sever the responsibility of the ^ Emperor from that of his confidential advisers . Our readers will perceive from the subjoined article , whichappeared in . our columns on the 9 th of June , 1855 , that we said then what our contemporaries are saying now . The only difference between the practices of the Imperial intimates in June , 1855 , and in November , 1856 , is , that in the one case they jobbed the war , and in the other they are jobbing the peace .

    IMPERIJLL STOCK-JOBBING . ( The Leader , June 9 , 1855 . ) The Paris correspondents of the London press have lately been complaining that certain telegraphic despatches from , the Crimea have been kept back , either ^ wholly or in part , for some time after they have been known to have arrived at the Tuileries- Tho French journalists have also

    observed the fact ; a pardonable reticence has prevented them from commenting -upon it . The oddest thing about the matter is , that the despatches in question are precisely those which , when they become public , exercise the liveliest influence upon the Bourse ; and , to make the joke perfect , it is generally found , when the news does come out , that some mysterious person or persons have operated upon the market to no inconsiderable

    extent . It is perfectly well known that who n Lotiis N " apoleom lived in London , he got his living by doing a little stock-jobbing now and then ; and , as he was occasionally able to pick up a crumb of information through his acquaintances there and connexions abroad , he is generally supposed to have made- a little money that way . At that time a Corsican was employed by him , and it was in his name that the transactions in Capel-court w « re carried on . That Corsican may noio be daily seen very btcsily employed uj ) O > i tlie Bourse and the Boulevards . The taking of Gonetchi was announced in London by the Secretary to the Admiralty in time for l ate editions of the morning papers ; but it ivas very late in the afternoon , and just about tho close of the Bourse , that the agenco Havas was selling the despatch as an important piece of intelligence to the various journals of Paris . So well was this managed , that tho Presse of that afternoon said not a word about it . During the whole of that day tho transactions upon the Bourse were more than usually brisk .

    Any one who walks into tho garden of tho Tuileries and sees the electric wires diverging from a small cabinet at the northern end towards every point of the horizon ( looking like reins by which a singlo pair of hands may drive the world ) , will find it difficult to believe that tho tenant of that caTainet could have been ignorant of that important picce ' of news for an hour after its reception in London . What was to prevent him

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    Koyember 8 , 1856 . ] THE LEADER . 1071 ¦ — — ^ ~^ m ~ m ^** m i — ill „ . „ . . _

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 8, 1856, page 1071, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2166/page/15/