Such, then, is the extent of the external transit of this country. There is scarcely a corner of the earth that is not visited by our vessels, and the special gifts and benefits conferred upon the most distant countries thus diffused and shared among even the humblest members of our own. To show the connexion of the metropolis with this vast amount of trade, involving so many industrial interests, I shall conclude with stating, that the returns prove that one-fourth of the entire maritime commerce of this country is carried on at the port of London.

As a sad contrast, however, to all this splendour, I may here add, that the annual loss of property in British shipping wrecked or foundered at sea may be assumed as amounting to nearly three million pounds sterling per annum. The annual loss of life occasioned by the wreck or foundering of British vessels may be fairly estimated at not less than one thousand souls in each year; so that it would appear, that the annual loss by shipwreck amongst the vessels belonging to the United Kingdom is, on an average, 1 ship in every 42; and the annual loss of property engaged therein 1l. in every 42l.; while the average number of sailors drowned amounts to 1 in every 203 persons engaged in navigation.

I now come to speak of the means by which the vast amount of wealth thus brought to our shores is distributed throughout the country. I have already said that there are three different modes of internal communication:—1, to convey the several articles coastwise from one port to another; 2, to carry them inland from town to town; and 3, to remove them from and to the different parts of the same town. I shall deal first with the communication along the coast.

In 1849, the coasting vessels employed in the intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland made upwards of 26,000 voyages, and the gross burden of the vessels thus engaged amounted to more than 3,500,000 tons. The “coasters” engaged in the carrying trade between the different ports of Great Britain in 1849, made no less than 255,000 voyages, and possessed collectively a capacity for carrying upwards of 20,000,000 tons of goods. Of the steam-vessels employed coastwise in the United Kingdom, the number that entered inwards, including their repeated voyages, was 17,800, having an aggregate burden of upwards of 4,000,000 tons, while 14,500 and odd steam-vessels, of not quite the same amount of tonnage, were cleared outwards. This expresses the entire amount of the coasting trade in connexion with the several ports of Great Britain. London, as I have before shown, has four times the number of sailing vessels, and ten times the amount of tonnage, over and above any port in the kingdom, whilst of steam-impelled coasting vessels it has but little more than one-third, compared with Liverpool.

Turnpike-Roads and Stage-Coaches.

The next branch of my subject that presents itself in due order is the means by which the goods thus brought to the several ports of the kingdom are carried to the interior of the country. There are two means of effecting this; that is to say, either by land or water-carriage. Land-carriage consists of transit by rail and transit by turnpike-roads; the water-carriage of transit by canals and navigable rivers. I shall begin with the first-mentioned of these, viz. turnpike-roads, and then proceed in due order to the others.

The turnpike-roads of England present a perfect network of communication, connecting town with town, and hamlet with hamlet. It was only within the present century, however, that these important means of increasing commerce and civilization were constructed according to scientific data. Before that, portions of what were known as the great coaching roads were repaired with more than usual care: but until Mr. M‘Adam’s system was generally adopted, about forty years back, all were more or less defective. It would be wearisome were I to add to the number of familiar instances of the difficulties and dilatoriness of travelling in the old days, and to tell how the ancient “heavy coaches” were merged in the “fast light coaches,” which, in their turn, yielded to the greater speed of the railways.

In 1818, according to the Government Report on the turnpike-roads and the railways of England and Wales, there existed—

Other parliamentary returns show, that in 1829 the length of only the turnpike-roads in England and Wales was 20,875 miles, or upwards of 1000 miles more than they (together with the paved streets) extended to 10 years before. In 1839, the length of the turnpike-roads and paved streets throughout England and Wales amounted to 22,534 miles, while all other highways were 96,993 miles long; making in all, 119,527 miles of road. By this it appears, that in the course of 20 years upwards of 4500 miles of highway had been added to the resources of the country. As these are the latest returns on the subject, and it is probable that, owing to the establishment of railways, there has been no great addition since that period to the aggregate extent of mileage above given, it may be as well to set forth the manner in which these facilities for intercommunication were distributed among the different parts of the country at that time. The counties containing the greatest length of turnpike-road, according to their size, were Derby, Worcester, Flint, Gloucester, Somerset, Monmouth, Stafford, Hereford, Southampton, &c., which severally contained one mile of turnpike-road to about each thousand statute acres, the average for the entire country being nearly double that amount of acres to each mile of road. Those counties, on the other hand, which contained the shortest length of turnpike-roads in relation to their size, were Anglesey (in which there were only five miles of road to 173,000 statute acres, being in the proportion of one mile to 34,688 acres); then Westmoreland, Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Pembroke, and Cumberland. The counties containing the greatest length of paved streets at the above period were, first, Middlesex, where there was one mile of street to every 774 acres; second, Suffolk; third, Lancaster; fourth, Warwick; fifth, Surrey; and sixth, Chester. The average number of acres to each mile of paved street was 12,734, and in the districts above specified the number of acres to the mile ranged from 3600 to 6900. Those counties, on the contrary, which contained the shortest length of streets, were Radnor and Anglesey, in which there were no paved streets whatever; Brecon, which has only one mile, and Carnarvon which has only two; whereas Middlesex, the county of the capital, has as many as 232 miles of streets extending through it. The cost of the repairs of the roads and streets in the different counties is equally curious. In Merioneth, the rate of the expenditure is 12s. 11¾d. per mile; in Montgomery, 1l. 14s. 2½d.; in Radnor, 1l. 18s. 1d.; in Brecon, 2l. 6s. 6½d.; in Carnarvon, 2l. 10s. 1¾d.; in Anglesey, 3l. 8s.; in Cardigan, 3l. 3s. 0½d.; whereas in Middlesex the cost amounts to no less than 87l. 1s. 6½d. per mile; in Lancashire, the next most expensive county, it is 32l. 2s. 6d.; in the West Riding of Yorkshire it comes to 23l. 4s. 3d.; and in Surrey, the other metropolitan county, to 19l. 1s. 1½d.; the average for the whole country being 10l. 12s. 1½d. per mile, or, 1,267,848l. for the maintenance of 119,527 miles of public highways throughout England and Wales.

These roads were used for a threefold purpose,—the conveyance of passengers, letters, and goods. The passengers, letters, and parcels, were conveyed chiefly by the mail and stage-coaches, the goods by waggons and vans. Of the number of passengers who travelled by the mail and stage-coaches no return was ever made. I am indebted, however, to Mr. Porter, for the following calculation as to the number of stage-coach travellers before their vehicles (to adopt their own mode of expression) were run off the roads by the steam-engine:—

“In order to obtain some approximation to the extent of travelling by means of stage-coaches in England, a careful calculation has been made upon the whole of the returns to the Stamp Office, and the licenses for which coaches were in operation at the end of the year 1834. The method followed in making the application has been to ascertain the performance of each vehicle, supposing that performance to have been equal to the full amount of the permission conveyed by the license, reducing the power so given to a number equal to the number of miles which one passenger might be conveyed in the course of the year. For example: a coach is licensed to convey 15 passengers daily from London to Birmingham, a distance of 112 miles. In order to ascertain the possible performance of this carriage during the year, if the number of miles is multiplied by the number of journeys, and that product multiplied again by the number of passengers, we shall obtain, as an element, a number equal to the number of miles along which one person might have been conveyed; viz. 112 × 365 × 15 = 613,200. In this case the number of miles travelled is 40,880, along which distance 15 persons might have been carried during the year: but for the simplification of the calculation, the further calculation is made, which shows that amount of travelling to be equal to the conveyance of one person through the distance of 613,200 miles. Upon making this calculation for the whole number of stage-coaches that possessed licenses at the end of the year 1834, it appears that the means of conveyance thus provided for travelling were equivalent to the conveyance during the year of one person for the distance of 597,159,420 miles, or more than six times between the earth and the sun. Observation has shown, that the degree in which the public avail themselves of the accommodation thus provided is in the proportion of 9 to 15, or three-fifths of its utmost extent. Following this proportion, the sum of all the travelling by stage-coaches in Great Britain may be represented by 385,295,652 miles. We shall probably go the utmost extent in assuming that not more than two millions of persons travel in that manner. It affords a good measure of the relative importance of the metropolis to the remainder of the country, that of the above number of 597,159,420, the large proportion of 409,052,644 is the product of stage-coaches which are licensed to run from London to various parts of the kingdom.”

In this calculation the stage-coach travelling of Ireland is not included, nor is that of Scotland, when confined to that kingdom; but when part of the communication is with England it is included. Of course, only public conveyances are spoken of: all the travelling in private carriages, or post-chaises, or hired gigs, is additional.

The number of stage-coachmen and guards in 1839 were 2619; in 1840, 2507; in 1841, 2239; in 1842, 2107; in 1843, 146.

The expenditure on account of these roads in 1841 amounted to 1,551,000l.; the revenue derived from them for the same year having been 1,574,000l.

A great change has been induced in the character of the turnpike-roads of England. The liveliness imparted to many of the lines of road by the scarlet coats of the drivers and guards, and by the sound of the guard’s bugle as it announced to all the idlers of the country place that “the London coach was coming in,” these things exist no longer. Now, on very few portions of the 1448 miles of the turnpike-road in Yorkshire, or the 840 of Gloucestershire, is a stage-coach-and-four to be seen: and the great coaching inns by the wayside, with the tribes of ostlers and helpers “changing horses” with a facility almost marvellous, have become farmhouses or mere wayside taverns.

The greatest rate of speed attained by any of the mail-coaches was eleven miles an hour, including stoppages; that is, eleven miles notwithstanding the delay incurred in changing horses, which was the work of from one minute to three, depending upon whether any passenger was “taken up” or set down at that stage (the word “station” is peculiar to railways). If there was merely a change of horses, about a minute was consumed. The horses were not unfrequently unsuccessful racehorses, and they were generally of “good blood.” Some would run daily on the same stages 8 and 10 years. About 10⅝ miles was an average rate for the mail, and 8½ to 9 miles for the stage-coaches. They often advertised 10 miles an hour, but that was only an advertisement.

So rapid, so systematic, and so commended was the style of stage-coach travelling, that some of the great coach proprietors dreaded little from the competitive results of railway travelling. One of these proprietors on “the Great North Road” used to say, “Railways are just a bounce—all speculation. People will find it out in time, and there’ll be more coaching than ever; railways can never answer!”

So punctual, too, were these carriages, that one gentleman used to say he set his watch by the Glasgow mail, as “she passed his door by the roadside, at three minutes to ten.”

Nor is it only in the discontinuance of stage-coaches that the roads of the kingdom have experienced a change in character. Until the prevalence of railways, “posting” was common. A wealthy person travelled to London in his own carriage, which was drawn by four horses, almost as quickly as by the mail. The horses were changed at the several stages; the ostler’s cry of “first turn out,” summoning the stablemen and the postilions with a readiness second only to that in the case of the passengers’ coaches. The horses, however, were ridden by postilions in red or light blue jackets, with white buttons, light-coloured breeches, and brown top-boots, instead of being driven four-in-hand. This was the aristocratic style of travelling, and its indulgence was costly. For a pair of good horses 1s. 6d. a-mile was an average charge, and 3d. a-mile had to be given in the compulsory gratuities of those days to the postilion; 3s. a-mile was the charge for four horses, but sometimes rather less. Thus, supposing that 500 noblemen and gentlemen “posted” to London on the opening of Parliament, each, as was common, with two carriages-and-four, and each posting 200 miles, the aggregate expenditure, without any sum for meals or for beds—and to “sleep on the road” was common when ladies were travelling—would be 35,000l., and to this add five per cent for the turnpike-tolls, and the whole cost would be 36,750l.; an average of 73l. 10s. for each nobleman and gentleman, with his family and the customary members of his household. The calculation refers merely to a portion of the members of the two houses of legislature, and is unquestionably within the mark; for though many travelled shorter distances and by cheaper modes, many travelled 400 miles, and with more carriages than three. No “lady” condescended to enter a stage-coach at the period concerning which I write. As the same expense was incurred in returning to the castle, hall, park, abbey, wood, or manor, the annual outlay for this one purpose of merely a fraction of the posters to London was 73,500l. It might not be extravagant to assert, that more than five times this outlay was annually incurred, including “pairs” and “fours,” or a total of 367,500l. This mode of travelling I believe is now almost wholly extinct, if indeed it be not impossible, since there are no horses now kept on the road for the purpose. I have been informed that the late Duke of Northumberland was the last, or one of the last, who, in dislike or dread of railways, regularly “posted” to and from Alnwick Castle to London.

The Railways.

The next branch of the transit by land appertains to the conveyance of persons and goods per rail. The railways of the United Kingdom open, in course of construction, or authorised to be constructed, extend over upwards of 12,000 miles, or four times the distance across the Atlantic. The following is the latest return on the subject, in a Report printed by order of the House of Commons, the 22nd of March last:—

There are now upwards of 6000 miles of railroad open for traffic in the three kingdoms, 549 miles having been opened in the course of the half-year following the date of the above return. At that date 111 miles of railroad were open for traffic, irrespective of their several branches. 266 railways, including branches, were authorised to be constructed, but had not been commenced.

The growth of railways was slow, and not gradual. They were unknown as modes of public conveyance before the present century, but roads on a similar principle, irrespective of steam, were in use in the Northumberland and Durham collieries, somewhere about the year 1700. The rails were not made of iron but of wood, and, with a facility previously unknown, a small cart, or a series of small carts, was dragged along them by a pony or a horse, to any given point where the coal had to be deposited. In the lead mines of the North Riding of Yorkshire the same system was adopted, the more rapidly and with the less fatigue, to convey the ore to the mouth of the mine. Some of these “tramways,” as they are called, were and are a mile and more in length; and visitors who penetrate into the very bowels of the mine are conveyed along those tramways in carts, drawn generally by a pony, and driven by a boy (who has to duck his head every here and there to avoid collision) into the galleries and open spaces where the miners are at work.

In the year 1801, the first Act of Parliament authorising the construction of a railway was passed. This was the Surrey, between Wandsworth and Croydon, nine miles in length, and constructed at a cost, in round numbers, of 60,000l. In the following twenty years, sixteen such Acts were passed, authorising the construction of 124¾ miles of railway, the cost of which was 971,232l., or upwards of 7500l. a-mile. In 1822 no such Act was passed. In 1823, Parliament authorised the construction of the Stockton and Darlington; and on that short railway, originated and completed in a great measure through the exertions of the wealthy Quakers of the neighbourhood, and opened on the 27th of December, 1825, steam-power was first used as a means of propulsion and locomotion on a railway. It was some little time before this that grave senators and learned journalists laughed to scorn Mr. Stephenson’s assertion, that steam “could be made to do twenty miles an hour on a railway.” In the following ten years, thirty railway bills were passed by the legislature; and among these, in 1826, was the Liverpool and Manchester, which was opened on the 16th September, 1830—an opening rendered as lamentable as it is memorable by the death of Mr. Huskisson. In 1834, seven railway bills were passed; ten in 1835; twenty-six in 1836; eleven in 1837; one in 1838; three in 1839; none again till 1843, and then only one—the Northampton and Peterborough, which extends along 44½ miles, and which cost 429,409l. The mass of the other railways have been constructed, or authorised, and the Acts of Parliament authorising their construction shelved, since the close of 1843. I find no official returns of the dates of the several enactments.

The following statement, in averages of four years, shows the amount of the sums which Parliament authorised the various companies to raise from 1822 to 1845. Upwards of one-half of the amount of the aggregate sum expended in 1822-6 was spent on the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, 1,832,375l. The cost of the Stockton and Darlington, (450,000l.), is also included:

Of these years, 1845 presents the era when the rage for railway speculation was most strongly manifested, as in that year the legislature sanctioned the raising, by new railway companies, of no less than 59,613,536l. more than the imperial taxes levied in the United Kingdom, while in 1844 the amount so sanctioned was 14,793,994l. The total sum to be raised for railway purposes for the last twenty years of the above dates was 153,455,837l., with a yearly average of 7,672,792l. For the four years preceding the yearly average was but 112,866l.

The parliamentary expenses attending the incorporation of sixteen of the principal railway companies were 683,498l., or an average per railway of 42,718l. It will be seen from the following table, that the greatest amount thus expended was on the incorporation of the Great Western. On that undertaking an outlay not much short of 90,000l. was incurred, before a foot of sod could be raised by the spade of the “navvy.”

It must be borne in mind that these large sums were all for parliamentary expenses alone, and were merely the disbursements of the railway proprietors, whose applications to Parliament were successful. Probably as large an amount was expended in opposition to the several bills, and in the fruitless advocacy of rival companies. Thus above a million and a-quarter of pounds sterling was spent as a preliminary outlay.

Of the railway lines, the construction of the Great Western, 117½ miles in length, was the most costly, entailing an expenditure of nearly eight millions; the London and Birmingham, 112½ miles, cost 6,073,114l.; the South-Eastern, 66 miles, 4,306,478l.; the Manchester and Leeds, 53 miles, 3,372,240l.; the Eastern Counties, 51 miles, 2,821,790l.; the Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock, and Ayr, 57½ miles, 1,071,263l.; an amount which was exceeded by the outlay on only the 3½ miles of the London and Blackwall, first opened, which cost 1,078,851l. I ought to mention, that the lengths in miles are those of the portions first opened to the public in the respective lines, and first authorised by parliamentary enactments. “Junctions,” “continuations,” and the blending of companies, have been subsequent measures, entailing, of course, proportionate outlay. The length of line of the Great Western, for instance, with its immediate branches, opened on the 30th of June, 1849, was 225 miles; that of the South-Eastern, 144 miles; and that of the Eastern Counties, 309 miles. It is stated in Mr. Knight’s “British Almanac” for the current year, that the “London and North-Western is almost the only company which has maintained in 1849 the same dividend even as in the preceding year, viz. seven per cent. The Great Western, the Midland, the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the York and Newcastle, the York and North Midland, the Eastern Counties, the South-Eastern, the South-Western, Brighton, the Manchester and Lincolnshire, all have suffered a decided diminution of dividend. These ten great companies, whose works up to the present time have cost over one hundred millions sterling, have on an average declared for the half year ending in the summer of 1849, a dividend on the regular non-guaranteed shares of between three and four per cent per annum. The remaining companies, about sixty in number, can hardly have reached an average of two per cent per annum in the same half year.”

The following Table gives the latest returns of railway traffic from 1845. Previous to that date no such returns were published in parliamentary papers:—

COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF THE TRAFFIC ON ALL THE RAILWAYS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM FOR THE FIVE YEARS ENDING JUNE 30, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, TOGETHER WITH THE LENGTH OF RAILWAY OPEN ON DECEMBER 31 AND JUNE 30 IN EACH YEAR.

This official table shows a conveyance for the year ending June, 1849, of 60,398,159 passengers. It may be as well to mention that every distinct trip is reckoned. Thus a gentleman travelling from and returning to Greenwich daily, figures in the return as 730 passengers. Of the number of individuals who travel in the United Kingdom I have no information. Thousands of the labouring classes travel very rarely, perhaps not more than once on some holiday trip in the course of a twelvemonth. But assuming every one to travel, and the population to be thirty millions, then we have two railway trips made by every man, woman, and child in the kingdom every year.

There are no data from which to deduce a precisely accurate calculation of the number of miles travelled by the 60,398,159 passengers who availed themselves of railway facilities in the year cited. Official lists show that seventy-eight railways comprise the extent of mileage given, but these railways vary in extent. The shortest of them open for the conveyance of passengers is the Belfast and County Down, which is only 4 miles 35 chains in length, and the number of passengers travelling on it 81,441. The Midland and the London and North-Western, on the other hand, are respectively 465 and 477 miles in length, and their complement of passengers is respectively 2,252,984 and 2,750,541½. The average length of the 78 railways is 70 miles, but as the stream of travel flows more from intermediate station to station along the course of the line, than from one extremity to the other, it may be reasonable to compute that each individual passenger has travelled one-fourth of the entire distance, or 17½ miles—a calculation confirmed by the amount paid by each individual, which is something short of 2s., or rather more than 1¼d. per mile.

Thus we may conclude that each passenger has journeyed 17½ miles, and that the grand aggregate of travel by all the railway passengers of the kingdom will be 1,052,327,632½ miles, or nearly eleven times the distance between the earth and the sun every year.

The Government returns present some curious results. The passengers by the second-class carriages have been more numerous every year than those by any other class, and for the year last returned were more than three times the number of those who indulged in the comforts of first-class vehicles. Notwithstanding nearly 1000 new miles of railway were opened for the public transit and traffic between June 1848-9, still the number of first-class passengers decreased no fewer than 112,000 and odd, while those who resorted to the humbler accommodation of the second class increased upwards of 170,000. The numerical majority of the second-class passengers over the first was:—

These figures afford some criterion as to the class or character of the travelling millions who are the supporters of the railways.

The official table presents another curious characteristic. The originators of railways, prior to the era of the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool, depended for their dividends far more upon the profits they might receive in the capacity of common carriers, upon the conveyance of manufactured goods, minerals, or merchandise, than upon the transit of passengers. It was the property in canals and in heavy carriage that would be depreciated, it was believed, rather than that in the stage-coaches. Even on the Manchester and Liverpool, the projectors did not expect to realise more than 20,000l. a-year by the conveyance of passengers. The result shows the fallacy of these computations, as the receipts for passengers for the year ending June, 1849, exceeded the receipts from “cattle, goods, parcels, and mails,” by 1,011,050l. In districts, however, which are at once agricultural and mineral, the amount realised from passengers falls short of that derived from other sources. Two instances will suffice to show this: The Stockton and Darlington is in immediate connexion with the district where the famous short-horn cattle were first bred by Mr. Collins, and where they are still bred in high perfection by eminent agriculturists. It is in connexion, moreover, with the coal and lead-mining districts of South Durham and North Yorkshire, the produce being conveyed to Stockton to be shipped. For the last year, the receipts from passengers were 8000l. and odd, while for the conveyance of cattle, coal, &c., no less than 62,000l. was paid. From their passengers the Taff Vale, including the Aberdale Railway Company, derived, for the same period, in round numbers, an increase of 6500l., and from their “goods” conveyance, 45,941l. In neither instance did the passengers pay one-seventh as much as the “goods.”

I now present the reader with two “summaries” from returns made to Parliament. The first relates to the number and description of persons employed on railways in the United Kingdom, and the second to the number and character of railway accidents.

Concerning the individuals employed upon the railways, the Table on the opposite page contains the latest official information.

Of the railways in full operation, the London and North-Western employs the greatest number of persons, in its long and branching extent of 477 miles, 35¼ chains, with 153 stations. The total number employed is 6194, and they are thus classified:—

On the Midland there were employed 4898 persons; on the Lancashire and Yorkshire, 3971; Great Western, 2997; Eastern Counties, 2939; Caledonian, 2409; York, Newcastle, and Berwick, 2731; London and South-Western, 2118; London, Brighton, and South-Coast, 2053; York and North Midland, 1614; North British, 1535; and South-Eastern, 1527. Thus the twelve leading companies retain permanently in their service 35,735 men, supplying the means of maintenance, (reckoning that a family of three is supported by each man employed) to 122,940 individuals. Pursuing the same calculation, as 159,784 men were employed on all the railways “open and unopen,” we may conclude that 739,136 individuals were dependent, more or less, upon railway traffic for their subsistence.

TOTAL NUMBER AND DESCRIPTION OF PERSONS EMPLOYED ON RAILWAYS.

The difficulties which Brindley overcame were considered insurmountable until he did overcome them. In the construction of a canal from Worsley to Manchester it was necessary to cross the river Irwell, where it is navigable at Barton. Brindley proposed to accomplish this by carrying an aqueduct 39 feet above the surface of the Irwell. This was considered so extravagant a proposition that there was a pause, and a gentleman eminent for engineering knowledge was consulted. He treated Brindley’s scheme as the scheme of a visionary, declaring that he had often heard of castles in the air, but never before heard where one was to be erected. The duke, however, had confidence in his engineer; and a successful, serviceable, and profitable aqueduct, instead of a castle in the air, was the speedy and successful result. The success of Brindley’s plans and the spirited munificence of the Duke of Bridgewater, who, that he might have ample means to complete his projects, at one time confined his mere personal expenses to 400l. a-year—laid the foundations of the large fortunes enjoyed by the Duke of Sutherland and his brother the late Earl of Ellesmere.

The canals which have been commenced and completed in the United Kingdom since the year 1800 are 30 in number, and extend 582¾ miles in length.

Mr. M‘Culloch gives a list of British canals, with the number of shareholders in the proprietary of each, the amount and cost of shares, and the price on the 27th June, 1843. The Erewash, with 231 shares, each 100l. returned a dividend of 40l., each share being then worth 675l. The Loughborough, with only 70 100l. shares, the average cost of each share having been 142l. 17s., had a dividend of 80l. and a selling price per share of 1400l. The Stroudwater, with 200 shares of 150l., returned a dividend of 24l., with a price in the market of 490l. On the other hand, the 50l. shares of the Crinau were then selling at 2l. The 50l. shares of the North Walsham and Dillon were of the same almost nominal value in the market; and the shares of the Thames and Medway, with an average cost of 30l. 4s. 3d., were worth but 1l. Of the cost expended in construction of the canals of England, I have no means of giving a precise account; but the following calculation seems sufficiently accurate for my present purpose. I find that, if in round numbers the 250,000 shares of the 40 principal canals averaged an expenditure of 100l. per share—the result would be 25,000,000l., and perhaps we may estimate the canals of the United Kingdom to have cost 35,000,000l., or one-tenth as much as the railways.

The foregoing inquiries present the following gigantic results:—There are employed in the yearly transit of Great Britain, abroad and along her own shores, 33,672 sailing-vessels and 1110 steam-vessels, employing 236,000 seamen. Calculating the value of each ship and cargo as the value has been estimated before Parliament, at 5000l., we have an aggregate value—sailing-vessels, steamers, and their cargoes included—of 173,910,000l. Further, supposing the yearly wages of the seamen, including officers, to be 20l. per head, the amount paid in wages would be 4,720,000l.

The railways now in operation in the United Kingdom extend 6000 miles, the cost of their construction (paid and to be paid) having been estimated at upwards of 350,000,000l. Last year they supplied the means of rapid travel to above 63,000,000 of passengers, who traversed above a billion of miles. Their receipts for the year approached 11,250,000l. of money, and nearly three-quarters of a million of persons are dependent upon them for subsistence.

The turnpike and other roads of Great Britain alone (independently of Ireland) present a surface 120,000 miles in length, for the various purposes of interchange, commerce, and recreation. They are maintained by the yearly expenditure of a million and a half.

For similar purposes the navigable canals and rivers of Great Britain and Ireland furnish an extent of 4850 miles, formed at a cost of probably 35,000,000l. Adding all these together, we have of turnpike-roads, railways, and canals, no less than 130,000 and odd miles, formed at an aggregate cost of upwards of 386,000,000l. If we add to this the 54,250,000l. capital expended in the mercantile marine, we have the gross total of more than 440,000,000 of money sunk in the transit of the country. If the number of miles traversed by the natives of this country in the course of the year by sea, road, rail, river, and canal, were summed up, it would reach to a distance greater than to the remotest planet yet discovered.