carried away by it. Only a short time before, he had admitted with
truth that he knew nothing of politics; but no sooner had he read

Paine than he felt completely enlightened. He now suddenly
discovered how much reason he and everybody else in England had for

being miserable. While residing at Portsmouth, he had quoted to his
Langholm friend the lines from Cowper's 'Task,' then just

published, beginning "Slaves cannot breathe in England;" but lo!
Mr. Paine had filled his imagination with the idea that England was

nothing but a nation of bondmen and aristocrats. To his natural
mind, the kingdom had appeared to be one in which a man had pretty

fair play, could think and speak, and do the thing he would,--
tolerably happy, tolerably prosperous" target="_blank" title="a.繁荣的；顺利的">prosperous, and enjoying many blessings.

He himself had felt free to labour, to prosper, and to rise from
manual to head work. No one had hindered him; his personal liberty

had never been interfered with; and he had freely employed his
earnings as he thought proper. But now the whole thing appeared a

delusion. Those rosy-cheeked old country gentlemen who came riding
into Shrewsbury to quarter sessions, and were so fond of their

young Scotch surveyor occupying themselves in building bridges,
maintaining infirmaries, making roads, and regulating gaols--

those county magistrates and members of parliament, aristocrats all,
were the very men who, according to Paine, were carrying the

country headlong to ruin!
If Telford could not offer an opinion on politics before, because

he "knew nothing about them," he had now no such difficulty. Had
his advice been asked about the foundations of a bridge, or the

security of an arch, he would have read and studied much before
giving it; he would have carefully inquired into the chemical

qualities of different kinds of lime--into the mechanical
principles of weight and resistance, and such like; but he had no

such hesitation in giving an opinion about the foundations of a
constitution of more than a thousand years' growth. Here, like

other young politicians, with Paine's book before him, he felt
competent to pronounce a decisive judgment at once. "I am

convinced," said he, writing to his Langholm friend, "that the
situation of Great Britain is such, that nothing short of some

signal revolution can prevent her from sinking into bankruptcy,
slavery, and insignificancy." He held that the national expenditure

was so enormous,*[13] arising from the corruptadministration of
the country, that it was impossible the "bloated mass" could hold

together any longer; and as he could not expect that "a hundred
Pulteneys," such as his employer, could be found to restore it to

health, the conclusion he arrived at was that ruin was
"inevitable."*[14] Notwithstanding the theoretical ruin of England

which pressed so heavy on his mind at this time, we find Telford
strongly recommending his correspondent to send any good wrights he

could find in his neighbourhood to Bath, where they would be
enabled to earn twenty shillings or a guinea a week at piece-work--

the wages paid at Langholm for similar work being only about half
those amounts.

In the same letter in which these observations occur, Telford
alluded to the disgraceful riots at Birmingham, in the course of

which Dr. Priestley's house and library were destroyed. As the
outrages were the work of the mob, Telford could not charge the

aristocracy with them; but with equal injustice he laid the blame
at the door of "the clergy," who had still less to do with them,

winding up with the prayer, "May the Lord mend their hearts and
lessen their incomes!"

Fortunately for Telford, his intercourse with the townspeople of
Shrewsbury was so small that his views on these subjects were never

known; and we very shortly find him employed by the clergy
themselves in building for them a new church in the town of

Bridgenorth. His patron and employer, Mr. Pulteney, however, knew
of his extreme views, and the knowledge came to him quite

accidentally. He found that Telford had made use of his frank to
send through the post a copy of Paine's 'Rights of Man' to his

Langholm correspondent,*[15] where the pamphlet excited as much
fury in the minds of some of the people of that town as it had done

in that of Telford himself. The "Langholm patriots "broke out into
drinking revolutionary toasts at the Cross, and so disturbed the

peace of the little town that some of them were confined for six
weeks in the county gaol.

Mr. Pulteney was very indignant at the liberty Telford had taken
with his frank, and a rupture between them seemed likely to ensue;

but the former was forgiving, and the matter went no further. It is
only right to add, that as Telford grew older and wiser, he became

more careful in jumping at conclusions on political topics.
The events which shortly occurred in France tended in a great measure

to heal his mental distresses as to the future of England. When the
"liberty" won by the Parisians ran into riot, and the "Friends of Man"

occupied themselves in taking off the heads of those who differed
from them, he became wonderfully reconciled to the enjoyment of the

substantial freedom which, after all, was secured to him by the
English Constitution. At the same time, he was so much occupied in

carrying out his important works, that he found but little time to
devote either to political speculation or to versemaking.

While living at Shrewsbury, he had his poem of 'Eskdale' reprinted
for private circulation. We have also seen several MS. verses by

him, written about the same period, which do not appear ever to
have been printed. One of these--the best--is entitled 'Verses to

the Memory of James Thomson, author of "Liberty, a poem;"' another
is a translation from Buchanan, 'On the Spheres;' and a third,

written in April, 1792, is entitled 'To Robin Burns, being a
postscript to some verses addressed to him on the establishment of

an Agricultural Chair in Edinburgh.' It would unnecessarily occupy
our space to print these effusions; and, to tell the truth, they

exhibit few if any indications of poetic power. No amount of
perseverance will make a poet of a man in whom the divine gift is

not born. The true line of Telford's genius lay in building and
engineering, in which direction we now propose to follow him.

[Image] Shrewsbury Castle
Footnotes for Chapter IV.

*[1] Letter to Mr. Andrew Little, Langholm, dated Shrewsbury Castle,
21st Feb., 1788.

*[2] This practice of noting down information, the result of
reading and observation, was continued by Mr. Telford until the

close of his life; his last pocket memorandum book, containing a
large amount of valuable information on mechanical subjects--a sort

of engineer's vade mecum--being printed in the appendix to the 4to.
'Life of Telford' published by his executors in 1838, pp. 663-90.

*[3] A medical man, a native of Eskdale, of great promise, who died
comparatively young.

*[4] Letter to Mr. Andrew Little, Langholm.
*[5] It would occupy unnecessary space to cite these poems.

The following, from the verses in memory of William Telford, relates
to schoolboy days, After alluding to the lofty Fell Hills, which

formed part of the sheep farm of his deceased friend's father, the
poet goes on to say:

"There 'mongst those rocks I'll form a rural seat,
And plant some ivy with its moss compleat;

I'll benches form of fragments from the stone,
Which, nicely pois'd, was by our hands o'erthrown,--

A simple frolic, but now dear to me,
Because, my Telford, 'twas performed with thee.

There, in the centre, sacred to his name,
I'll place an altar, where the lambent flame

Shall yearly rise, and every youth shall join
The willing voice, and sing the enraptured line.

But we, my friend, will often steal away
To this lone seat, and quiet pass the day;

Here oft recall the pleasing scenes we knew
In early youth, when every scene was new,

When rural happiness our moments blest,
And joys untainted rose in every breast."

*[6] Letter to Mr. Andrew Little, Langholm, dated 16th July, 1788.
*[7] Ibid.