The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-06-19 00:00:00

tives and results of public action—investigates and
lays bare the tortuous and hidden operations by
which classes and factions have sought to bend the
course of events to a furtherance of their own selfish
or mistaken ends—traces the progress and marks the
importance of those great achievements in moral and
physical science which have- imparted to the present
age those features of distinctive superiority which se-
gregate it from the mental culture of bygone days. All
this he does with the calm dignity of the philosopher,
mingling, though slightly, the force of his judg-
ment with the sweet blendings of admiration—tem-
pering his censure by the promptings of a forgiving
spirit. tinder the inspiration of a broad intelligence,
he illuminates his picture by the radiance of hope, and
supports its power and impressiveness by introducing
bold shadows from the past, while he heightens its
interest and sustains its fidelity by vigorous and strong
limnings of the present.
Having in the preceding volume investigated the
principles and exhibited some of the more prominent
results involved in that monetary revolution intro-
duced and carried out by the late Sir Robert Peel, he
opens the present by examining the social condition of
Ireland, and tracing through that condition the moral
aspect of the Irish population as it was made to herald
the second revolution (Catholic Emancipation) for
which the country has to thank the wavering forti-
tude of that vacillating minister. In the published
progress of his labours, the historian has not yet
reached the period of the third revolution (Free Trade
as it is called) inaugurated by others, but carried into
effect by that versatile and unstable politician, the
ever-ready agent of expediency.
Conspicuous among the physical improvements
which have grown out of the moral advance achieved
during the continuance of the long peace which fol-
lowed the downfal of the first Napoleon, the sugges-
tion, execution and full development of railways forms
one of the most striking features. As such, it meets
with due attention from Sir Archibald Alison, whose
reflections upon the subject show him possessed of a
mind alive to all the bearings of so vast and compre-
hensive a subject. After having briefly, yet forcibly
detailed the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool
Railway, the first constructed in the empire for travel-
ling, and narrating in plaintive tones the "melancholy
and fatal accident to Mr. Huskisson, which clouded
the inauguration of that great undertaking, Sir Archi-
bald proceeds with his consideration of

DIE RAILWAY SYSTEM

With this mournful catastrophe, and thus baptised in blo-od,
did the railway system arise in England. Rapid beyond all
human calculation was the progress which it made, and
boundless beyond all human ken are the efforts which it has
produced. Like most of the discoveries destined to produce
great and lasting changes on human affairs, its introduction
owed little to science, by which it was distrusted, and its
effects did not immediately develope themselves. But ere long
they, were fully made manifest, and they have now, in a
manner, changed the whole face of society in the civilised
world. Before the year 1850, no less than eleven hundred
and eleven acts of parliament had been passed, to form
new lines or extend old ones ; and the capital authorised to
be expended on them amounted to the enormous sum of
£348,012,188.
But the effects of the railway system have not been con-
fined merely to the industrial and monetary concerns of the
nation, great and lasting as these effects have been. It has
produced social and' political results of the very highest im-
portance, and which, like other things in this world, have
been partly salutary and partly pernicious: It has in a great
measure destroyed space, and brought the most distant parts
of the empire into comparatively close proximity with its
great cities and metropolis. In this way it has, to a most
surprising degree, equalised the circumstances of the different
parts of the country, and deprived the immediate neighbour-
hood of the capital Sand large towns of the exclusive advan-
tages which they have so long enjoyed. The markets of
London are supplied with beef from Aberdeenshire, pork front
Ireland, and vegetables and milk from the midland counties
of England, as regularly as they used to be from the fields of
Surrey or the downs of Sussex. Immense and entirely bene-
ficial have been the effects of this equalisation ; and they have