ABSTRACT
The great rail-road between Liverpool and Manchester being now nearly completed, the directors of the undertaking sometime ago announced that they would give a premium of £500. for the locomotive engine, which should, at a public trial to be made on the 1st of the present month of October, (afterwards postponed to the 6th) draw on the railway a given weight with the greatest speed at the least expence. The offer of so handsome a premium, and the brilliant professional prospects which the winning of it presented to mechanical men, naturally exerted a very lively spirit of competition among them. In almost every quarter of the country, engine makers and engine inventors set themselves to work to secure the prize, and the result, we are happy to say, has been such as to furnish a lasting example of the wisdom of calling into action, and giving fair play to the general talent of a country, when any great public object has, as in the present instance, to be accomplished.
