[Stafford:  ill18.jpg]

The principal manufacture is that of shoes for exportation.  Many remarkable men have represented Stafford, some as remarkable for their talent as for their folly.  Sheridan’s most brilliant speeches, and Urquhart’s most undeniable failures in the House of Commons, were both due to the borough of Stafford.  It is, in fact, a stepping-stone to the House of Commons, always ready for the highest bidder and promiser, but whoever would sit for Stafford for a series of Parliaments, would need the use of the Philosopher’s Stone.  The independent electors would exhaust California if they had the chance.

As the Stafford shoemakers, to the deep disappointment of its agricultural neighbours, have not yet been ruined by the influx of foreign boots and shoes, its chief interest at present is derived from its being the point from which several important railways radiate.

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Stafford to Manchester.—­Beside the old Grand Junction line to Crewe, the Trent Valley line, about which we intend to say a few words on our return journey, ends, strictly speaking, at Stafford, after passing by Atherston, Tamworth, and Lichfield; but, since the construction of the North Staffordshire, which joins the Trent Valley at Colewich, the most direct way to Manchester is through the pottery district and Macclesfield, instead of by Stafford and Crewe.  Direct lines have generally proved a great mistake, except so far as they have accommodated the local traffic through which they passed.  To the shareholders they have been most unprofitable wherever the original shareholders were not lucky enough to bully the main lines into a lease, and, to the average of travellers very inconvenient, by dividing accommodation.  But shareholders should look at the local traffic of a proposed direct line, on which alone good dividends can be earned.

These direct projects were partly the result of the imperfect manner in which, in consequence of opposition and from want of experience, the original main branch lines were executed, and partly in that plethora of money, which, in this thriving country, must be relieved from time to time by the bleeding of ingenious schemers.  We are enjoying, in this year of 1851, the advantages derived from money spent, and lost to the spenders, in our own country instead of being sunk in Greek or Spanish bonds, South American mines, or the banks and public works of the United States.

At one period, in the height of the ten per cent. mania, a school of railway economists sprang up which advocated placing the construction and the profits of railways in the hands of government, and they supported their theories by ex post facto criticism on the blunders of railway companies,—­on the astonishing dividends of Mr. George Hudson’s lines,—­and on the hard terms on which capitalists had agreed to execute French railways for the French government.