At a dinner given at Liverpool in celebration of the opening of the
Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Lord Brougham thus discourses upon the
memorable event and the death of Mr. Huskisson:—“When I saw the
difficulties of space, as it were, overcome; when I beheld a kind of
miracle exhibited before my astonished eyes; when I saw the rocks
excavated and the gigantic power of man penetrating through miles of the
solid mass, and gaining a great, a lasting, an almost perennial conquest
over the powers of nature by his skill and industry; when I contemplated
all this, was it possible for me to avoid the reflections which crowded
into my mind, not in praise of man’s great success, not in admiration of
the genius and perseverance he had displayed, or even of the courage he
had shown in setting himself against the obstacles that matter afforded
to his course—no! but the melancholy reflection that these prodigious
efforts of the human race, so fruitful of praise but so much more
fruitful of lasting blessing to mankind, have forced a tear from my eye
by that unhappy casualty which deprived me of a friend and you of a
representative!”