The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-16 00:00:00

° Viennt -4%
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LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1849.

The construction of railways throughout our
Asiatic and American colonies is a project so fraught
with advantages both to the mother country and to
her remotest possessions, that the imagination is
almost bewildered by its magnificence. To give a
simple enumeration of these advantages within any-
thing like reasonable limits would be a miracle of
literary condensation. But a rapid mention of some
of the most conspicuous and important may be
sufficient to demonstrate the ingenuity, the genius,
and the patriotism of those who have proclaimed the
necessity as well as the practicability of the under-
taking. Every one who regards with proper vigi-
lance the progress of British power and of European
civilization in our Oriental dominions is ac-
quainted not only with the scheme now
on foot for the establishment of a gigantic
line of steam communication between the diffe-
rent provinces of Hindostan, from Tanjore to
Agra, and from Bengal to Hyderabad, but are
likewise familiar with the differences that have
interrupted, for the time being, the prosecution of
the adventure in consequence of the very reasonable
demead made by the Directors of the Company, that
the Indian Government should guarantee the share-
holders a minimum dividend as an indemnity for the
loss of that authority which will be retained over the
whole system and working of the Indian railways,
by the Council at Calcutta and the Court in Leaden-
hall.street. Every one, however, is not equally aware
of a still more extraordinary proposition which has
recently emanated from a distinguished officer in one
of her Majesty's Highland regiments,* a proposi•
tion fully and eloquently unfolded by him in a letter
addressed to his friend, the celebrated novelist and
wit, HALIBURTON. According to the scheme dis-
closed in this remarkable pamphlet, mails, merchan.;
passengers might be perpetually conveyed to
dize, and
and fro between England and her colonial
toetrritori traverse
es
in the two hemispheres wlthout having
which roads might
the roads of continental Europe (
be rendered impassable at any moment by the out-
break of a general war), and without the, necessity
of having to double either the Cape of Good Hope
or Cape Horn, where the seas are as tem-
pestuous as the voyages are circuitous ; and
the intercourse between Great Britain and her most
distant and scattered possessions would not only be by
this means less liable to interruption, but it would
be infinitely more rapid, and, in every respect, more
convenient. The proposed line of railway would
link together the two oceans, the Pacific and the
Atlantic ; it would stretch in a direct line across our
colonies in North America; it would commence at
Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and would terminate at

Frazer's River, pouring into the Gulf of Georgia ; it
would communicate by steam.vessels with the ports
of the United Kingdom in one direction, and in
the other would promote a continual interchange of
commodities and intelligence with Pekin, with Canton,
with Australia, with New Zealand, with the Spice
Islands, with Ceylon, with Madras, and with Cal-
cutta. As an incitement to tlse enterprise of the
ration and the Government, it is mentioned by the
projector (p. 221 that it is the determination of the
United States to commence at once, and to complete
with the utmost rapidity, a line of railway, extending
N-8131 York to the bay of San Francisco C' the
fines harbour in the world "), and in this man.

* A Letter to the Author of the ' Clockmaker,' con-
taining thoughts on theantic subjectand of
the a Rail
Paci fiwayc,C fromommuthe
ni
cation between the Atl
magnificent harbour of Halifax, in Nova Scotia (North-
'Eastern America), tot be mouth of Frazer's River, in
New Caledonia (North-Western America), or such other
pat as Duty be determined upon." ivo. pp. 59. Lon-
don; V. P. Metchina, 1649.