The Sun.
London, England, 1857-02-19 00:00:00

RAILWAY TRAFFIC RETURNS.

LONDON AND NORTH- WESTKRN RAILWAY.—Tra£ISc
return for thelweek ending Feb. 15, 1857 E56,465 0 0
Corresponding week last year

G 1 AT NORTHERN RAILWAY.—Tra.the return for the
week ending Feb. 8, 1857 £19,277 5 4
Corresponding week last year

CHESTER AND HOLYHEAD RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for
the week ending Feb. 15, 1857 £3,993 0 0
Ourrosponaing week last year 3,923. 0 0

In zreage iu 1557 . .

,70 0 0

LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAlLWAY.—Traffic re
turn for the week ending Feb. 15, 1857 £21,753 1
Corresponding week last year 19,419 7 9
CORK AND BANDON RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for week
onc;ing Feb. 14, 1857
Corresponding woek last year.......

GREAT LUXEMBOURG RAlLWAY.—Traffic return for the
week ending Feb. 15, 1557 £BO2 6 9

Coirespouiting week last year..,......

. 300 16 6

LONDON GENERIL OMNIBUS COMPANY.—Traffic re-
turns for the week ending Feb. 14, 1857 £10,503 lr 5

THE NEW' LINE OF CONTINENTAL
COMMUNICATION.

There is, says Solomon, nothing new under the sun ;
and however hard it may be to accept an axiom like this
in this day of ours, when electric telegraphs, railways,
steam, and gas seem to be revealing the hidden secrets
of nature, we are, and not very seldom, compelled to ac-
knowledge its truth by the return to the way which our
ancestors trod some 800 to 1,000 years ago. Elec-
tricity and its management have brought distant com-
munities into such close proximity, that the world is
not content now with circuitous passages, when others
more direct can be obtained. It is from this feeling that
the new route to Holland North and Central Germany,
and thereby the south, east of the Jura range of moun-
tains to Trieste, has been devised. There is no doubt of
the advantage to be obtained by this way of progress,
for the gain of time alone amounts to two days between
London and the Adriatic, by way of Harwich, Rotter-
dam, and the Dutch-Rhenish Railway ; and after
that by Vienna to Trieste. To say nothing of this
gain of dine, in the great majority of instances of com-
mercial iutercourse the saving of expense in the mul-
titude of transits which make up the traffic of passec-
gers and goods between England, Holland, Germany,
Turkey, and India, at the very first will be perceived
to amount to a sum equal to the revenues of a kingdom,
and a saving in mercantile transactions equal to the pro-
fit on a shipping business, Of this the Liverpool mer-
chants are fully sensible, and have accordingly joined
themselves largely to the undertaking ; and there can be
no hesitation in saying that there is baldly a line of rail-
way in the midland, the eastern, and the southern dis-
tricts of the country which will not reap a very consider-
able advantage by the opening of the means of transit
proffered by the London, Harwich, and Continental
Steam-packet Company.
The port of liar wich lies sixty-eight miles north-east
of London, is safe from every wind, lies due west of Rot-
terdam, and as far up in the North Sea as to be beyond
any of the conflicting ocean currents which act so
strongly nearer to the entrance and in the entrance of
the British Channel. The passages, therefore, between
the two ports are effected with more ease, speed, and
safety than bet .seen any other ports of equal distance
from each other. This is one and certainly not an un-
important consideration, but it is only a minor, for it
ministers to another of far higher interest. To the com-
mercial public of the metropolis the route is so short
mid speedy compared with the long, and what we
have learned to consider the tedious, estuary of the
Thames, by which a vessel to Rotterdam, Hamburg, and
the Baltic ports has first to go seventy miles out of her
Course, beat against the head winds which check her
rounding by the Essex coast, and then make another
hundred miles in order to gain the very ground which
she would have reached so long before if she had started
from Harwich.
It is very evident that the way of transit by Harwich
must perhaps by degrees, but not the less certainly for
that, secure in the end the wh01.3 of the traffic between
London, Holland, Hanover, Saxony, and Central Ger-
many,ft oe
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the i
at n
yobservationwill
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hb
ee
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ecbehye aeapt
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reetsupaceneeddi
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oe.
twhTeee
mayyeaasyt
janimiotitohsutigit of treasure which is almost daily passing to and
from London, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Hamburg,
ht ic arisesi
the great geeraea, tanddanfgorer to
which
h insurance
alone its
t oP aLangdeo over
nvbeyr
the Thames would pay nearly, ,if not entirely, the whole
of thtehec,Eerirarisatgen. As the traffic must of necessity pass
over
Counties Railway, the shareholders of
that property are surely as much interested in the suc-
cess of the steam packets passing between Rotterdam
and Harwich, as the proprietors who only hold in the
London, Harwich, and Continental Steam Packet Com-
pany, and therefore the whole interest of that association
may be reckoned upon for the promotion of the newnootm;
pally. That, it is true, is only taking the subject o
weh
presume, is narrow ground of the value of the shares ; but_that,
vies
snotaid a
that matterthe ofm ercindifferenceavt of to
Liverpool,prudent maeenei