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"Whereas the making a Railway with proper Works and Conveniences connected therewith, for the Carriage of Passengers. Goods and Merchandise from London to Birmingham, will prove of great public advantage, by opening an additional, cheap, certain, and expeditious Communication between the Metropolis, the Port of London, and the large manufacturing town and neighbourhood of Birmingham; and will at the same time facilitate the means of transit and traffic for Passengers. Goods, and Merchandize, between those places and the adjacent districts and the several intermediate towns and places."
The Preamble to the Act for making a Railway from London to Birmingham, of which the above is a copy, was voted on the 1st of June by a large majority of the Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the Bill was referred. On the 8th of July a majority of the Committee of the House of Lords resolved that the Allegations of the same Preamble had not been proved.
The Directors, in publishing a selection from the evidence which was given before the Committee of the Lords, have proceeded on the conviction that the knowledge of the subject which it is calculated to diffuse will act more powerfully in removing those objections of influential persons which occasioned the loss of the former Bill, than any arguments which could be employed by the advocates of the Railway.
The Directors have confined their extracts exclusively to the evidence given before the Lords' Committees; in the first place, because having been given on oath, it is less diffuse than the evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons; and, in the second place, because the Minutes having been printed at length by order of their Lordships, it will be more easy to ascertain, by reference to official documents, the general correctness of the present publication.
