Railroads we would subject to the same general system as common roads, and indeed include them and canals in that system. A railroad from Dover to John O'Groat's house, with branches to Holyhead, Liverpool, Carlisle, Portpatrick, and Aberdeen, ought unquestionably to be undertaken by government (The money might be raised in shares, transferable like canal shares; government taking a number of shares, and guaranteeing to individuals a certain percentage); while subordinate railroads might be engaged in by counties, parishes, or unions of these. It is clear that the governments of all countries must sooner or later adopt the railroad system of communication from their seats of government to their extreme points, and that ultimately there will be one main railroad through every large continent, and in every large island. There is no insuperable difficulty to prevent a railroad from being laid down from Calais to Pekin; all that is wanting is a generation of civilisation in the more barbarous of the intervening nations, so as to admit of the cooperation of the different governments. We could wish that all of our readers who have not yet been on the Manchester and Liverpool railroad could visit it, in order that they might be inspired with those feelings on this subject which we are certain it is utterly beyond the power of description to convey. As the editor of the Scotsman predicted some years ago, it is highly probable that persons not much beyond the middle age may live to go from Edinburgh to London in a summer's day. It has been proved on the Manchester railway, that letters can be conveyed at the rate of upwards of thirty miles an hour; and the heaviest goods at twenty miles an hour. It may be alleged that such a power as we contemplate if delegated to parishes or counties, would be liable to abuse; and to a certain extent this is inevitable, because abuse, like accident, enters more or less into every thing: but if parish and county representatives were elected on an efficient representative system, and all their proceedings conducted in public and published in the local and general newspapers the abuse would be comparatively small; oligarchical vestries and representative vestries are very different bodies, and very different proceedings must be expected from them.
