The Express.
London, England, 1847-07-08 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 8, 1847.

mail. of water power and the ii;:e) "ze best
adapted to reward cultivation. To this an cs.`ertel°
presented by the frequent remoteness and '
access of ancu places. The capitalist who dimoovers
and would fain turn them to account is embarrassed
by the almost impossibility of conveying his produce
to market. Even for shorter distances the rude roads,
or no roads, of a new settlement obstruct the inter-
course of the thin-sown inhabitants, preventing, in
many eases, the interchange of neighbourly assistance.
The productiveness of capital is diminished, the ame-
nities of life ;destroyed. The country is thus made
repulsive to the employing class, the existence of
which is necessary to afford the mere labouring class
the means of coming on in the world.
Wherever this obstacle has been overcome—and in
proportion as it is overcome—the progress of new
settlements receives an impetus. The mere azitay out
of a blazed road has its effect ; the daring experiment
of constructing the Erie Canal—the Hercules-in-his-
cradle effort of the juvenile state of New York—
worked wonders, and the railroads (rough and make-
shift as they often are) with which the citizens of the
United States yearly penetrate their virgin forests
are working greater still.
Tho projected line of railway from St. Andrew's—a
thriving Seaport at thesouth. west angle of New B runs-
wick—to Woodstock, in the heart of the valley of the
St. John, will placethat naturally rich and inland region
in immediate connexion with the coast. The linepassea
through a region as yet thinly settled, but at no great
distance from the frontier of Maine, dotted with vil-
lager of a busy active population. Already the cost
of transport for the goods (flour and salted provi-
sions, West India produce, and British merchandise)
yearly conveyed by the existing imperfect routes
from St. Andrew's to Woodstock amounts to 17,5001.;
for the returns (timber and agricultural produce), to
20,2501. Here, if we add passengers and the in-
creased communication which always follows im-
proved means of transport, is a fair prospect of a
paying business. This line of railway can pay itself,
and it will remove from the region through which it
passes the feature most repulsive and discouraging to
that class of settlers which alone can form the nucleus
of a colony.
Entertaining, as we have repeatedly confessed we
do, little faith in grand artificial schemes of colonisa-
tion, we hail with pleasure the opening afforded by
enterprises like that of the St. Andrew and Wood-
stock Railway, in the first place to small capitalists,
and in the next place to mere labouring emigrants.
The enterprise has the recommendation of being a
fair sober mercantile investment; it has the further

recommendation of having been originated in the
colony, matured during the lapse of several years,
and strengthened by the adhesion of capitalists in the
mother country. 'fo a multiplicity of such real
business undertakings throughout the colonies (to
this and the St. Lawrence and Atlantic, and the
Quebec and Halifax Railways, the copper mines in
Lake Superior, and ss forth), not to magnificent pro-
jects hatched in the drawing-rooms or counting-
' houses of speculators, do we look for the opening up
of a field of investment for our surplus store of small
capitalists—of employment for our redundant labourers.