164 RAILWAYS, HIGHWAYS, AND CANALS. 



of those by whom the engine is made, as has been devoted to the en- 

 gine itself; and that while we are employing all this mechanical 

 power, exempting it from taxation, and exulting in the results of our 

 partiality, there are millions of human minds compelled to think of 

 nothing else but their own miserable condition, who else might have 

 been employed in promoting the general improvement and wealth of 

 the country hand-in-hand with their own happiness. It would be 

 injustice to sacrifice the engine for the sake of the man ; but surely 

 it is not less injustice to sacrifice the man for the sake of the engine. 

 But by the present system this is done, and done to a very great extent ; 

 the man is taxed in every thing that he consumes, except the air of 

 heaven, and the fumes of manufactories ; there is sometimes a sort of 

 indirect tax upon that, while the materials of which the engine is 

 made are generally, and the whole of the articles which it consumes 

 are wholly, exempted from taxation, Man has not thus fair play in 

 the country, unless he has capital sufficient for purchasing a machine 

 and necessity for using it ; and in so far as domestic animals consume 

 taxed produce which, in the case of horses especially, is to a consi- 

 derable extent they are in the same predicament ; and not only so, 

 but they and the vehicles by means of which their services are ren- 

 dered available to the public, are subjected in many cases to a direct 

 taxation. The difference of these taxations upon men and horses, and 

 upon steam-engines used for the purposes of internal communiction, 

 appear only partially in the difference of duty upon the steam-car- 

 riage and coach drawn by horses, though even in that single item it 

 is sufficiently great for rendering every simple comparison of the ex- 

 pense at which the two can perform labour, altogether inconclusive. 

 It was, therefore, highly judicious in Mr. Grahame to mention this 

 difference in the preliminary part of his inquiry. 



Mr. Grahame ('pp. 17 34) gives a very clever exposition of the 

 two systems according to which the management of public thorough- 

 fares in Britain, whether roads, railways, or canals, is conducted the 

 trustee and commissioner system for the roads and the joint-stock 

 corporation for the others. Both these systems are bad, and both 

 have been productive of evils besides those mentioned by our author, 

 which, in the care of the trusts, are chiefly unskilful management and 

 improvident expenditure. But the whole system of roads, made and 

 repaired by a toll levied on those who use them, is bad. In the first 

 place, these local trustees, though they ostensibly manage a most im- 

 portant public accommodation, professedly for the public good, and 

 generously, as one would say, without any pecuniary reward, yet 

 they do not manage it by applying the general law of the land, but 

 by local acts, which are obtained on their own shewing, and for their 

 own purposes. The obtaining of these acts, costs a great deal, both in 

 money and time, and it is, or at least it once was, a very fertile source 

 of parliamentary jobbing. Secondly, the collection of tolls is a great 

 interruption to travellers ; it is a most unequal tax, and in some in- 

 stances it is made a very oppressive one. The collecting of it costs 

 more than would, in not a few instances, keep the road in repair ; 

 and there is much additional expense in clerks to trusts, and various 

 other ways. Indeed it is almost an axiom that those services to the 



