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This was known afterwards as "the Railway Mania," which, like other manias, if they are not mere fever-fits of speculation, but are founded on real and tangible gains, had its eager hopeful rise, its inflated disproportioned exaggeration, its disastrous collapse, its gradual recovery, and eventually its solid reasonable success.
Even with regard, sir, to the offence of which he is now accused, somewhat may, perhaps, be said in extenuation of his guilt, which I do not offer to gratify any personal affection or regard for him, to whom I am equally a stranger with any other gentleman in this house, but to prevent a punishment which may be hereafter thought disproportioned to the crime.
The differences between the positions of men in social strata, supply some of the most effective motives for the struggle of life; and the effort of men to rise into the wealthy or the powerful class is not likely to cease so long as men are men; but they take an unworthy form so long as the ambition is simply to attain privileges unconnected with or disproportioned to the duties involved, and which therefore generate hatred to the social structure.
But there were two objections to this proceeding. First, it was deemed too severe for the offence, and, second, there was not a tree or a post, or any convenient object, whereon to hang him. "Roast him alive!" suggested David Mowat, but this also was laughed at as being disproportioned to the offence. "Duck him!" cried Sam Hayes.
His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuk; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form.
Attila himself did not degenerate in aspect from this unlovely race; for an historian tells us, whom I have already made use of, that "his features bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuck; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form."
It does not appear that his position was ill chosen, or his means disproportioned to his ends, had he been sustained by funds from England, as he had a right to expect. But through the profligacy of a near relative, commissioned to collect these dues, he was disappointed of them, and his paper protested and credit destroyed in our cities, before he became aware of his danger.
Burr's conspiracy attracted an amount of attention, both at home and in the pages of history, altogether disproportioned to its real consequence. His career had been striking. He had been Vice-President of the United States. He had lacked but one vote of being made President, when the election of 1800 was thrown into the House of Representatives.
When the troops that had defeated Napoleon stopped, baffled, before a breast-work defended by raw militiamen; when, finding that the heads of their columns melted away like wax in fire as they approached the blaze of those hunters' rifles, they finally recoiled, terribly defeated, saved from total destruction, perhaps, only by the fact that their enemy had not enough of a military organization to enable them to pursue effectively; when, in brief, a battle with men who never before had seen a skirmish of regular troops was turned into a slaughter almost unparalleled for disproportioned losses in the history of civilized warfare, the English loss being about twelve hundred, the American some fifteen all told; one would have thought that such a demonstration of the power of the rifle would have brought Robins's words to the memory of England, "will perhaps fall but little short of the wonderful effects which histories relate to have been formerly produced by the first inventors of fire-arms."
There were temples, pyramids, immense catafalques, kiosks, etc., all massively built of tiles. The extent of this cemetery is quite disproportioned to the number of Europeans in Monghyr; but the place is said to be the most unhealthy in India, so that when a European is ordered there for any number of years, he generally takes a last farewell of all his friends.
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