Part 8 (1/2)

What the Romans were to England, the colonized English must be to Australia. But the discovery of great natural wealth, the vigour of the race, the intercourse with commercial nations of the old and new world, the free inst.i.tutions which have been transplanted there without any arbitrary meddling or chilling patronage, will effect in a quarter of a century what the parent people, struggling with ignorant rulers and feeble resources, have been ages in accomplis.h.i.+ng.

It is encouraging to all nations to see what we have accomplished in this direction.

In 1839 the turnpike-roads of England and Wales amounted to 21,962 miles, and in Scotland to 3666 miles; while in England and Wales the other highways amounted to 104,772 miles. The turnpike-roads were maintained at a cost of a million a year; and the parish highways at a cost of about twelve hundred thousand pounds. There were at that time nearly eight thousand toll-gates in England and Wales. There had been two thousand miles of turnpike-roads, and ten thousand miles of other highways, added to the number existing in 1814. But the improvements of all our roads during that period had been enormous. Science was brought to bear upon the turnpike lines. Common sense changed their form and re-organized their material. The most beautiful engineering was applied to raise valleys and lower hills. Mountains were crossed with ease; rivers were spanned over by ma.s.sive piers, or by bridges which hung in the air like fairy platforms. The names of M'Adam and Telford became ”household words;” and even parish surveyors, stimulated by example, took thought how to mend their ways.

The Ca.n.a.ls of England date only for a hundred years back. The first Act of Parliament for the construction of a ca.n.a.l was pa.s.sed in 1755. The Duke of Bridgewater obtained his first Act of Parliament in 1759, for the construction of those n.o.ble works which will connect his memory with those who have been the greatest benefactors of their country. The great manufacturing prosperity of England dates from this period; and it will be for ever a.s.sociated with the names of Watt, the improver and almost the inventor of the steam-engine,--of Arkwright, the presiding genius of cotton-spinning,--and of Brindley, the great engineer of ca.n.a.ls. In the conception of the vast works which Brindley undertook for the Duke of Bridgewater, there was an originality and boldness which may have been carried further in recent engineering, but which a century ago were the creators of works which were looked upon as marvels. To cut tunnels through hills--to carry mounds across valleys--to build aqueducts over navigable rivers--were regarded then as wild and impracticable conceptions. Another engineer, at Brindley's desire, was called in to give an opinion as to a proposed aqueduct over the river Irwell. He looked at the spot where the aqueduct was to be built, and exclaimed, ”I have often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown the place where any of them were to be erected.” Brindley's castle in the air still stands firm; and his example, and that of his truly ill.u.s.trious employer, have covered our land with many such fabrics, which owe their origin not to the government but to the people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Brindley's Aqueduct over the Irwell.]

The navigable ca.n.a.ls of England are more than two thousand miles in length. For the slow transport of heavy goods they hold their place against the compet.i.tion of railroads, and continue to be important instruments of internal commerce. When railways were first projected it is said that an engineer, being asked what would become of the ca.n.a.ls if the new mode of transit were adopted, answered that they would be drained and become the beds of railways. Like many other predictions connected with the last great medium of internal communication, the engineer was wholly mistaken in his prophecy.

The great principle of exchange between one part of this empire and another part, which has ceased to be an affair of restrictions and jealousies, has covered the island with good roads, with ca.n.a.ls, and finally with railways. The railway and the steam-carriage have carried the principle of diminis.h.i.+ng the price of conveyance, and therefore of commodities, by machinery, to an extent which makes all other ill.u.s.trations almost unnecessary. A road with a waggon moving on it is a mechanical combination; a ca.n.a.l, with its locks, and towing-paths, and boats gliding along almost without effort, is a higher mechanical combination; a railway, with its locomotive engine, and carriage after carriage dragged along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, is the highest of such mechanical combinations. The force applied upon a level turnpike-road, which is required to move 1800 lbs., if applied to drag a ca.n.a.l-boat will move 55,500 lbs., both at the rate of 2-1/2 miles per hour. But we want economy in time as well as economy in the application of motive power. It has been attempted to apply speed to ca.n.a.l travelling. Up to four miles an hour the ca.n.a.l can convey an equal weight more economically than a railroad; but after a certain velocity is exceeded, that is 13-1/2 miles an hour, the horse on the turnpike-road can drag as much as the ca.n.a.l-team. Then comes in the great advantage of the railroad. The same force that is required to draw 1900 lbs. upon a ca.n.a.l, at a rate above 13-1/2 miles an hour, will draw 14,400 lbs. upon a railway, at the rate of 13-1/2 miles an hour. The producers and consumers are thus brought together, not only at the least cost of transit, but at the least expenditure of time. The road, the ca.n.a.l, and the railway have each their distinctive advantages; and it is worthy of note how they work together. From every railway station there must be a road to the adjacent towns and villages, and a better road than was once thought necessary. Horses are required as much as ever, although mails and post-chaises are no longer the glories of the road; and the post finds its way into every hamlet by the united agency of the road and the railway.

Roger North described a Newcastle railway in 1680:--”Another thing that is remarkable is their way-leaves; for when men have pieces of ground between the colliery and the river, they sell leave to lead coals over their ground; and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect 20_l._ per annum for this leave. The manner of the carriage is by laying rails of timber, from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails; whereby the carriage is so easy that the horse will draw down four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the coal-merchant.” Who would have thought that this contrivance would have led to no large results till a hundred and fifty years had pa.s.sed away?

Who could have believed that ”the rails of timber, exactly straight and parallel,” and the ”bulky carts with four rowlets exactly fitting the rails,” would have changed the face, and to a great degree the destinies, of the world?

If we add to the road, the ca.n.a.l, and the railway, the steam-boat traffic of our own coasts, we cannot hesitate to believe that the whole territory of Great Britain and Ireland is more compact, more closely united, more accessible, than was a single county two centuries ago. It may be said, without exaggeration, that it would now be impossible for a traveller in England to set himself down in any accessible situation where the post from London would not reach him in twelve hours. When the first edition of the 'Results of Machinery' was published in 1831, we said that the post from London would reach any part of England in three days; and that, ”fifty years before, such a quickness of communication would have been considered beyond the compa.s.s of human means.” In twenty-four years we have so diminished the practical amount of distance between one part of Great Britain and another, that the post from London to Aberdeen is carried five hundred and forty miles in little more than twenty hours. It is this wonderful rapidity of communication, in connection with the cheapness of postage, which has multiplied letters five-fold since 1839, when the penny rate was introduced. In that year the number of chargeable and franked letters distributed in the United Kingdom was eighty-two millions; in 1853 it was four hundred and ten millions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Locomotive-Engine Factory.]

The annual returns of our railways furnish some of the most astounding figures of modern statistics. On the 1st of January 1854 there were open in England 5811 miles of railway; in Scotland, 995 miles; in Ireland, 834 miles. In 1853 there were one hundred and two million pa.s.sengers conveyed, who travelled one billion five hundred million miles, being an average of nearly fifteen miles to each pa.s.senger. In England considerably less than one-half of the pa.s.sengers were by penny-a-mile and other third-cla.s.s trains; in Ireland one-half; and in Scotland two-thirds. The receipts from goods traffic exceed those of the pa.s.senger traffic in England and Scotland, but are less in Ireland.

These are indeed wonderful results from a system which was wholly experimental twenty-five years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Railway Locomotive.]

When William Hutton, in the middle of last century, started from Nottingham (where he earned a scanty living as a bookbinder) and walked to London and back for the purpose of buying tools, he was nine days from home, six of which were spent in going and returning. He travelled on foot, dreading robbers, and still more dreading the cost of food and lodging at public-houses. His whole expenses during this toilsome expedition were only ten s.h.i.+llings and eight pence; but he contented himself with the barest necessaries, keeping the money for his tools sewed up in his s.h.i.+rt-collar. If William Hutton had lived in these days, he would, upon sheer principles of economy, have gone to London by the Nottingham train at a cost of twenty s.h.i.+llings for his transit, in one forenoon, and returned in another. The twenty s.h.i.+llings would have been sacrificed for his conveyance, but he would have had a week's labour free to go to work with his new tools; he need not have sewed his money in his s.h.i.+rt-collar for fear of thieves; and his shoes would not have been worn out and his feet blistered in his toilsome march of two hundred and fifty miles.

A very few years ago it was not uncommon to hear men say that this wonderful communication, the greatest triumph of modern skill, was not a blessing;--for the machinery had put somebody out of employ. Baron Humboldt, a traveller in South America, tells us that, upon a road being made over a part of the great chain of mountains called the Andes, the government was pet.i.tioned against the road by a body of men who for centuries had gained a living by carrying travellers in baskets strapped upon their backs over the fearful rocks, which only these guides could cross. Which was the better course--to make the road, and create the thousand employments belonging to freedom of intercourse, for these very carriers of travellers, and for all other men; or to leave the mountains without a road, that the poor guides might gain a premium for risking their lives in an unnecessary peril? But, looking at their direct results, we have no doubt that railroads have greatly multiplied the employments connected with the conveyance of goods and pa.s.sengers. In 1853 there were eighty thousand persons employed upon the railroads of the United Kingdom in various capacities. We do not include those employed in working upon lines that are not open for traffic, which cla.s.s in England amounted to twenty-five thousand persons in 1853. But the indirect occupations called into activity by railroads are so numerous as to defy all attempts at calculating the numbers engaged in them. No doubt many occupations were changed by railroads;--there were fewer coachmen, guards, postboys, waggoners, and others, on such a post-road as that from London to York. But it is equally certain that throughout the kingdom there are far more persons employed in conducting the internal communication of the country, effecting that great addition to its productive powers, without which all other production would languish and decay. The census returns of 1851 give the number of three hundred and eighty-six thousand males so employed, including those engaged on our rivers, ca.n.a.ls, and coast traffic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reindeer.]

The vast extension, and the new channels, of our foreign commerce have been greatly affected by the prodigious facilities of our internal communication. They have created, in a measure, special departments of industry, which can be most advantageously pursued in particular localities; but which railways and steam-vessels have united with the whole kingdom, with its colonies, with the habitable globe. The reindeer connects the Laplander with the markets of Sweden, and draws his sledge over the frozen wilds at a speed and power of continuance only rivalled by the locomotive. The same beneficent Providence which has given this animal to the inhabitant of the polar regions,--not only for food, for clothing, but for transport to a.s.sociate him with some civilization,--has bestowed upon us the mighty power of steam, to connect us with the entire world, from which we were once held to be wholly separated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beaver.]

CHAPTER XIV.

Houses--The pyramids--Mechanical power--Carpenters'

tools--American machinery for building--Bricks--Slate-- Household fittings and furniture--Paper-hangings-- Carpets--Gla.s.s--Pottery--Improvements effected through the reduction or repeal of duties on domestic requirements.

The beaver builds his huts with the tools which nature has given him. He gnaws pieces of wood in two with his sharp teeth, so sharp that the teeth of a similar animal, the agouti, form the only cutting-tool which some rude nations possess. When the beavers desire to move a large piece of wood, they join in a body to drag it along.

Man has not teeth that will cut wood: but he has reason, which directs him to the choice of much more perfect tools.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pyramid and sphinx]

Some of the great monuments of antiquity, such as the pyramids of Egypt, are constructed of enormous blocks of stone brought from distant quarries. We have no means of estimating, with any accuracy, the mechanical knowledge possessed by the people engaged in these works. It was, probably, very small, and, consequently, the human labour employed in such edifices was not only enormous in quant.i.ty, but exceedingly painful to the workmen. The Egyptians, according to Herodotus, a Greek writer who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, hated the memory of the kings who built the pyramids. He tells us that the great pyramid occupied a hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection, without counting the workmen who were employed in hewing the stones, and in conveying them to the spot where the pyramid was built. Herodotus speaks of this work as a torment to the people; and doubtless the labour engaged in raising huge ma.s.ses of stone, that was extensive enough to employ a hundred thousand men for twenty years, which is equal to two millions of men for one year, must have been fearfully tormenting without machinery, or with very imperfect machinery. It has been calculated that about half the steam-engines of England, worked by thirty-six thousand men, would raise the same quant.i.ty of stones from the quarry, and elevate them to the same height as the great pyramid, in the short time of eighteen hours. The people of Egypt groaned for twenty years under this enormous work. The labourers groaned because they were sorely taxed; and the rest of the people groaned because they had to pay the labourers. The labourers lived, it is true, upon the wages of their labour, that is, they were paid in food--kept like horses--as the reward of their work. Herodotus says that it was recorded on the pyramid that the onions, radishes, and garlic which the labourers consumed, cost sixteen hundred talents of silver: an immense sum, equivalent to several million pounds. But the onions, radishes, and garlic, the bread, and clothes of the labourer, were wrung out of the profitable labour of the rest of the people. The building of the pyramid was an unprofitable labour. There was no immediate or future source of produce in the pyramid; it produced neither food, nor fuel, nor clothes, nor any other necessary. The labour of a hundred thousand men for twenty years, stupidly employed upon this monument, without an object beyond that of gratifying the pride of the tyrant who raised it, was a direct tax upon the profitable labour of the rest of the people.

”Instead of useful works, like nature great, Enormous cruel wonders crush'd the land.”