POST-OFFICE, ROADS, AND CONVEYANCE. 611 



it were, a new territory to Great Britain, equal in extent to Ireland, 

 without the drawback on her unmanageable population. At the 

 present moment it is calculated that the consumption of grain by 

 human mouths in Great Britain is about 32,000,000 quarters, of 

 which not one-twentieth part is imported. But the saving that will 

 arise from the removal of the horses used for transit alone, will be 

 equal to more than what is consumed by the fourth part of our popu- 

 lation. A change which will enable England to grow food sufficient 

 for her own supply, will be attended by the most important benefits, 

 for it will check the suicidal system now pursued, of Ireland sending 

 us annually the food which she requires for her own subsistence, to- 

 gether with the starving hordes who should eat it upon their own 

 soil. It will further permit our agriculturists to retain amongst 

 themselves the 15,000,000^. which is yearly sent out of the country 

 for -flax, hemp, cotton, tobacco, and foreign corn, all of which this 

 change will permit to be reared at home. The conversion of Ireland, 

 comparatively speaking, into a clothing country, would speedily 

 make her a richer market for our manufactures than any that our 

 free trade theorists will ever find abroad. 

 . " 4th It will increase manual labour, 



" The application of steam hitherto to physical purposes only, 

 which to a vast extent has multiplied the conveniences of life, has, 

 nevertheless, been accompanied with evils of no little magnitude. It 

 has abridged human labour, unbalanced production and consumption, 

 and aggregated those causes which have occasioned stagnation, idle- 

 ness, and distress. The extension of steam to economic purposes i. e. 

 the removal of brute labour, will remedy the evils of its partial appli- 

 cation, by giving an impulse to the coal trade, the iron trade, road 

 making, machinery, &c. sufficient to improve the whole industry of 

 the country. Should the present mode of stage coach conveyance 

 continue for the next twelve years, there would be expended 

 70,000,000 sterling upon the purchase, and the keep of the horses 

 exclusively employed for the purpose, all which sum would be a dead 

 loss to the community at large ; since it would be sunk partly in the 

 consumption of food, partly in the purchase of a perishable commo- 

 dity, in whose fabrication is employed no manual labour whatever, 

 whereas the change will vest it in human hands. The whole culture 

 and transport of the country is at present carried on by live machinery, 

 to the production of which no human labour is necessary. The two 

 millions of horses that now consume the food of sixteen millions of 

 people, and in whose purchase is sunk a fluctuating unproductive 

 capital of upwards of 30,000,000, were not put together by human 

 artifice. But the locomotive carriages which shall supply their place, 

 must be dug out of the bowels of the earth, smelted in the foundry, 

 and fashioned on the smithy. They require human hands to make, 

 and human hands must also provide what puts them in motion fuel. 

 The extension of steam to economic purposes will therefore open 

 up new, permanent, and boundless fields of manual occupation. It 

 will improve the general industry of the nation, for hitherto it has 

 only made goods, but now it will also make a market. 



" Lastly, the adoption of the Proposal will distribute capital. It 

 is one of the worst features of our social condition, that the wealth of 



