London has been startled by an attempt at crime hitherto
without precedent in England. Some person or persons not yet detected endeavoured on Sunday night to blow up an express train on the London and North-Western line with dynamite. A regular infernal machine, a quantity of cartridges filled with dynamite, was found on Monday morning near Bushey, buried in a rude hole scraped with the hand under the rails. The cartridges were connected with the surface of the rails by three short indiarubber tubes filled with powder and beaded with per- cussion caps. The evidence proves almost indisputably that the mine was laid between 7 and 10 p.m., and was intended to blowup one of the four expresses which pass the point in rapid succession. The first engine seems to have pushed aside the tubes without exploding them. All kinds of theories have been started to account for the crime, several of which we have mentioned else- where, the most reasonable perhaps being that it was the work of men moved by some hatred of the Company. No conspicuous person travelled by any of the trains except Lord Northbrook, there was no political object to be served, and there was no treasure in the train. An idea that it was intended to seize the mail-bags is discredited by the day being Sunday. No remittances would be in the letters on that day, and probably no important despatches.
