The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-05 00:00:00

SUPPLEMENTS GRATIS
THE DISPA.
In consequence of WITH the immense demanTdCH for the DISPATCIt
and SUPPLEMENT yesterday, containing a hill Report of Mr.
Shell's most brilliant Speech, the Proprietors of the Dispatch are,
apprehensive that numbers of persons, who may be desirous oC
obtaining copies of their Journal, may be disttppointed,
unless provision be made to meet such demand. With this
view they purpose striking off ten thousand extra papers to keeP
on sale during the week ; and as, when these are disposed
others will not be obtainable, an early application is suggested.
RS the Supplement which accompanied the Dispatch of yesterday,
will be necessary to bind with those Supplements that arc to follow ;
so that when the great national trial is concluded a perfect history of
the affair (including a biographical sketch of Mr. O'Connell), which
may be bound, or otherwise preserved as a matter of reference, will -
be in the possession of every purchaser of the Dispatch, time
proprietors of which, anxious to render the account perfect, will
present (gratis) a Supplement each Sunday during the progress of
the trial, and another at the conclusion, containing all the proceeding-
up to the Supplement of yesterday. That of Sunday next will be
comprised in 48 columns the same size as the Dispatch, and contain
a verbatim report of the most eloqueut:speeches of Mr. Whiteside and
of Mr. O'Connell.

Orders for the Dispatch are received by every News Agtvit and.
Bookseller in the kingdom ; and by Mr. Wood, at the Office, 133.
Fleet-street.

rip HE SIGNATURE thus !—" CAPT. JOHN
-IL RHODES PIDDING, HONOURABLE COM-.
PANY'S SERVICE," is on every genuine Package of Capt.
Pidding's Celebrated Teas. The spurious Teas advertised,
under counterfeited titles makes this Caution necessary. Capt.
Pidding, who has made eight voyages to China, cempleted
araangements when last at Canton, securing to himself the.
exclusive importation of these particular Teas.
Sold at the reduced prices by Mr. Verrey, 229, Regent—
street (corner of Hanover-street), and 3, Opera-oolonnade ;
and T. 'Littlejohn and Son, 77, King William-street, City.
Note.—Verrey and Littlejohn are thconly vendors in Lon—
don of Capt. Pidding's celebrated Teas. For Country Agencies,
address, "Capt. Pidding, College Hill."

RAILWAYS.
It has been stated that the applications to Par-.
liament, this session, for Railway Bills, will be more
numerous than they have been in any year since
1830 ; that the lines to which the contemplated Bills
relate extend 600 miles in length, and that the pro-
jectors are so confident of carrying their Bills as to
have already, in their eagerness to commence pro-
ceedings, entered into contracts for the formation of
these railways, at an expense, including stations, of
10,0001. per mile. We have so much reason to con-
fide in the general authenticity of this statement, as
to feel it our duty to direct the earliest attention of
the public to the important considerations which
connect themselves with the facts which it com-
prises. Could any argument more cogent be
adduced for the necessity of that preliminary controll-
ing and economical legislation touching the com-
mencement and construction of new railways, which
the public convenience has so long and so vainly de-
manded ? The public convenience--emphatically, it
is—which is immediately and most deeply involved
in these projects for enlarging and multiplying the
lines of intercommunication between important pro-
vincial towns and the capital, or the capital and the
coast—with whatever, as yet, undetermined, because
future practical results, certainly not without an ex-
pense to the public at large of very grave present
inconvenience—of serious prejudice to private pro-
perty under certain circumstances—and of the dis-
placement of a large amount of existing facilities and
accommodation for travelling.
It is hardly necessary, at this time, to guard our-
selves against misconstruction by reiterating the con-
viction we have so often expressed as to the magical
effects of the'extension of railroad communication,
wherever it is extensively diffused throughout a
country. It removes, or rather counteracts the
physical—and overcomes the moral—obstacles, which
the remoteness of given points from the general
centre of intelligence and refinement would other-
wise :present to the prompt spread of the knowledge,
and arts, and civilization there collected. It is the,
great extirpator of local prejudices. It is the in-
forming power which animates the extremities with
the same vitality and energy that throb in the heart
of a nation's social system. It brings the dwellers
in the North into habitual and easy contact with
those of the South; and to the long segregated po..
pulation of the East, introduces, as it were without
effort or difficulty, their brethren of the West. It
erases the frontier lines described by geographical
or political divisions ; and with them—by certain
but irresistible degrees—the antagonistic feelings
which have grown up on either side of those lines.
It approximates distances by a marvellous abridg-
ment of the time which it would heretofore have re-
quired to traverse them. For these, and other
obvious reasons, railroads are among the most
efficient and valuable administrators, not merely to
the sum or mass of human intelligence and happiness
but to its distribution ; and the distribution of good:
is as difficult a problem in the economy of ethics,
as the distribution of money is in our monetary
system. But even the establishment of railways is
not an unmixed good. If it drives out of the field one
monopoly of travelling on the high road by coaches, it
establishes another, and a stringent one, on its own
uncompetable lines. It annihilates altogether the
facility of moving from any one intermediate point
to another on these high roads or their vicinity,
which are not within the easy reach of rai lwa
stations. It sacrifices, wherever it appears, a vast
portion of property previously invested in hotels and
inns, stabling, public stage-coaches, horses for their
various relays, posting houses, and the cattle em-
ployed by them, together with the business of so
many coach-makers, spring manufacturers, white-
smiths, saddlers, harness makers, forage growers
and dealers ; a numerous array of shop-
keepers, and inferior chapmen (all interested in the
investments of capital under the old system), the
farmers of turnpike trusts and the unfortunate holders
of securities upon tolls. These mischiefs, extensive
and various as they are, it may be urged are still but
partial ones ; for that, on a comparison of good and
evil, of public advantage and disadvantage, the
balance is clearly in favour of railroads. We may
grant all this ; and concede the corollary—that there..
fore the evil occasioned by the establishment of rail-
roads must be accepted as an inevitable consequence
of the conditions on which only they can be estab.
lished.
But other evils, not inevitable consequences, not
necessary results of those conditions, have crept iia
with the laying down of our existing railroads,
the experience of which justifies us in assum-
ing that, with regard to any lines hereafter
to be constructed, they may be clearly avoided by
adopting such a previous system of legislation, for the
economic control and direction of their original este.
biishment as that to which we have alluded in the out.
set. We should be the last to advocate any unneces-
sary intervention, either by the Government or the
Legislature, with any investments of private capital
in this country that are permissible by the law of the
land. But, railroads are a species of public works
sui generic. If they, succeed, their advantages and
the benefit their proprietors derive from them, cannot
be, as in almost every other undertaking, interfered
with or jeopardised by the competition of other par-
ties in the same object, and over the same ground.
The Parliament will not grant to two separate coin.
panics power to purchase the fee simple as it were,
of parallel strips of freehold throughout so many
miles of country, in order to run their lines
from and to neighbouring termini. Separate
companies—two or more, would not be found
to subscribe a million or two, each, •of capital
in so vast and desperate an experiment of competi.
tion,- were Parliament even to grant them the neces•
sary powers. But private dealers or gentlemen may
start this week the finest and the best horsed public
conveyances to be found in Europe, to run through•
out an entire line of 100 miles ; and next week a few
Jews may combine their capital, and produce an or.
ganised opposition of well-appointed coaches, hand.
some teams, &c., for the very purpose of beinfif
" bought off the road," as it is termed, by the original
parties, at a heavy sum. If their predecessors on the
line do not consent to embarrass themselves by dos.
ing with the exorbitant proposals of their " opposi.
tion," the latter run" against them ; and then the
contest is continued a routrance, till one of the parties
gives in. Sometimes, indeed, both are utterly ruined,
leaving to their creditors, out of the wreck of a large
property sacrificed in this insane sort of emulation,
dividend neither larger nor more valuable than the
tips of the tails of the Kilkenny cats, of combative
memory.
In the debates of the House of Commons during
Lord Morpeth's Irish Secretaryship, it was we
shown what ought to be the supervision which the
Legislature should exercise over the preliminary sea.
lection and works of a few railways. Some of the
propositions then made were finally adopted and hare
passed into law ; others, at least equally important
were passed over. But it is not enough that eminent
engineers, civil and military, should report upon the
practicability of a proposed line ; there should be
better previous guarantees that it is "the best"
which could be adopted for the locality. Every nee
line ought to be- sanctioned only in reference
to its present, or possible, or ultimate relations to $
scheme or line of railroad communication through
the great divisions of aheiength and breadth of the
land. It shOuld be asceibained that wherever publics
convenience may demand it;4it can be joined to inn in
lines already laid down and in-Work, by branches of.
fering the best facilities of level, subsoil, &c., for theif
future construction. There should no hazard of
bringing any two of these huge arty-ris of social
communication too closely into juxtapo'sltiqp. All
precautions should be adopted for avoiding, here it
may be practicable to do so, needless or vexatious in-
terference with the lands and holdings of relue.
tent landowners on the line of railways
projected. Tunnelling should be, fl Tue}?ras
the superficial outline of the country will a ldow,t
em
jetted. But, in order to provide thithesee
essential arrangements, there should aonrga:li:3
Legislature or the
previously, and deposited
d lost requisi e ne. o. raway,
the most eligible an
nver the whole British islands;
Government, some genera sch.em.te olri plsane, shoirieg
not yet constructed,
_o
and an applications for new Bills should be enter.
tained or dismissed, in proportion as their intender/
lines might be found to approach to or be incompam
tible with such general scheme of railway projections.