The Sun.
London, England, 1847-07-01 00:00:00

RAILWAY ECONOMY.

Next to our race of energetic and ingenious men (says
Mr. Sydney, in his Railway System)—next to our trea-
sures of coal and of iron—nothing has contributed more
to the successful rivalry in commerce, and all the arts of
peace and war, which this small island has maintained
with great European states, blessed with a more favour-
able climate and more fertile soil, than our excellent
means, natural and artificial, of internal communication
—what Baron Charles Dupin has so happily called our
pouvoir viable,—while the sea around us forms an easy
highway from north to south, from east to west.
Roads, rivers rendered navigable, canals, and railroads
(the last discovered and most perfect means of reducing
time and space), not only give increased value to our
fields and our mines, but actually create wealth
as much as if they struck on veins of gold and diamonds ;
for means of easy conveyance open the long-neglected
coal-mine, give fuel to the shivering peasantry, employ-
ment to the miner, and unlooked-for revenue to the
landed proprietor—easy means of conveyance bring lime
and manure to be laid down on the reclaimed heath,
which, in return, gives back hay and corn, turnips, milk,
cream, butter, cheese, and fat cattle to be also conveyed
to the markets the new roads have opened. The amount
of this interchange must depend on the price of transport.
A hard turnpike road made that point near which was
out of all reach when pack-horses on bridle-roads were
the only means of transport. The canal still more re-
ducedrail r
railroad,
a the
h edistancemost
all and
anedxpbeesnt of sefoarllc, was open to ertainevery-
articles ; the
thing which it would be useful to transport, from an ox
to a load of manure. Cheap as railroads are, they would
be more useful if.they were cheaper.
At first sight, this would seem a truism so obvious,
that to prove it, no long
array of facts and arguments
drawn from the stores of parliamentary reports was re-
quired ; and yet in this year of 1847, in the seventeenth
experience, at this moment great and
session of railway
constantly increasing offorts are being made to saddle
the country with an additional, or rather excrescence,
on our present railway system, which will not only
swallow up all the economies of construction which ex
perience has effected up to the present time, but also
render railway communication expensive, inefficient, and
unsafe.

a railroad
h n
erw i
ll
fall
There can be no doubt that capital unnecessarily ex-
pended on a canal or railroad must becomel! taxu P
e o
thnempmuobdliactieniitth. er
Tull).
us oarandseina, inished ac •
costs 1,000,000 i, which might havemba eidnvestmen i
investment constructedy
will prove
highqu
nu irteeemrausanhweareralgtl
ievfs
co,
,r
oarsnOdo
the,Ot
hsOpeoel
c.
r,
no
leaaidtt hi
vaeern travellers
again, that railways
into decay and disorder, or the company will be pre-
vented from extending to other and perhaps less wealthy n
pdiesrtireincetse thheasbepnrenfivtesdo,f
alogcaoimn oatinvde communication Ex.
which are not remunerative will not long be either
efficient or safe. In this country the great streams of
commerce are already secured by our principal trunk
lines ; the districts which remain open for railway pro-
jects are agricultural, rich rather in latent than in
existing traffic ; which, if they are to be well served,
must be cheaply served. Therefore the completion of
an effective railway system—that is to say, a system
which shall base its success on the many— which shall
fill the place, not only of the ship and stage-coach, but
of the carrier's cart—must depend on economical con-
struction and economical management.

RAILWAY PROGRESS ON THE AMERICAN
CONTINENT.
The surplus products of American harvests, and its
transportation to meet the exigencies of the mother
American lines difficult
that the New Jersey
trains both night and
quantity" of flour which has been received at
country,tadonaydbe
other
thTe hr render e
obtained,
lines nd e r freightslrnotwithstanding.o n a many
oy n the
extra
Boston by the Western Ral,lway between Sept. 1 and
April 10 was 182,542 barrels, against 143,647 barrels
for the corresponding period
last year. The quantity of
corn received from all points during the same period was
1,353,560 bushels.
VIEW COMMERCIAL ON AMERICAN LINZS.—The im-
pressions that at present prevail in America relative
to the ultimate remunerativeness of their multiplying
lines may be taken as a tolerable criterion of the
eventual advantage that will accrue upon prudent
enterprise in connexion with almost all our British'rail-
ways. It is predicted in the best informed quarters that
location, must eventually pay
in the country earned
more money in 1846 than in 1845, and so far this year
they have done a very
.large business compared with the
corresponding period in former
every line in America, no matter how unfavourable at
;cod present
dividends. may
appear
their
Nearly every rail
Years. The activity in
the grain markets has given all any quantity of freight,
and they have been reaping a very rich harvest. Every
road in the country, in good hands, must improve in
value and productiveness. They are so intimately con-
nected with the trade and commerce of the country, that
they must improve as resources become developed, and
connexions are made between different sections of the
country. The business of the New England
lines is almost entirely of a local character
and they pay better dividends than any other
roads in this country. Railways running in any
direction from New Yo7k, or one in any way
connected with it, are more favourably located than
any others in the country. The New Yorkers have ex-
pended nearly three hundred millions of dollars in works
of internal improvement; some are unproductive, some
in an unfinished state, and some at present perfectly
useless. At the time the immense debts of some of the
States were contracted, the public mind was almost
entirely absorbed by the construction of canals. The
canals built at that timo, at such an extravagant rate of