POST-OFFICE, ROADS, AND CONVKYANCE. 613 



on which their accruing revenues can be best appropriated for the 

 service of the state." It is superfluous to urge the exigent necessity 

 which there is for doing something of a practical kind, to absorb 

 labour, to cheapen food, and distribute capital. Nor can we conceive 

 a more effectual method of accomplishing these objects than the one 

 proposed. That the results anticipated must arise from its adoption 

 cannot be questioned. Steam applied to economic purposes, that is 

 to say, to the removal of brute labour, will produce as wonderful a 

 revolution in the political as it has hitherto done in the physical 

 world. With the power, then, in our hands to effect so great an im- 

 provement in our social condition, it may not simply be injudicious, 

 it may be suicidal to withhold the will. The deposits of private in- 

 dividuals last year with the Bank of England, bearing no interest 

 (exclusive of 4,000,000/. of public balances) amounted to nearly 

 10,500,000/. If this sum was borrowed by government and applied 

 to the general introduction of locomotive conveyance, it would realize 

 eventually a profit of upwards of 50/. per cent, for the public service. 

 If this return appears over estimated, we speak advisedly, for docu- 

 ments have already been given to the public, which shew that steam- 

 carriages may be worked at a profit of nearly cent, per cent. Bowed 

 down, then, as the country is with taxation, and embarrassed as Mi- 

 nisters are to procure funds for carrying on the administration of 

 affairs, what should prevent them from appropriating this invention? 

 But this is not all : at a moment of the deepest agricultural distress, 

 and when something must be done to recruit the exhausted resources 

 of our farmers, about 10,000,000/. yearly is improvidently sent out of 

 the country for flax, hemp, corn, tobacco, &c., all which the partial 

 removal of horses will allow us to raise at home. Of the poor rates, 

 also, which have hitherto been administered in such a way as to be a 

 premium for idleness and improvidence, there is at least 6,000,000/. 

 which could not be more judiciously applied than in introducing a 

 system which will, in a few years, work out their cause by absorbing 

 the whole surplus labour of the country. Including these sums there 

 is involved in the current expenditure of the post-office, roads, and 

 stage-coach conveyance, a sum of at least 40,000,000/., one third or 

 more of which may be economized for the public benefit. " But are 

 our ministers," asks the reviewer from whom we have already quoted, 

 " the men to grapple with this great question ? to determine upon 

 looking not at the difficulties only, but att he advantages of such a 

 proposition as that which has been placed before them ? to attempt, 

 at any rate, to secure to the public a measure promising such extensive 

 and lasting utility ? Not they. We have no hopes of them. So far 

 as they are concerned, the imputation put forth in the Westminister 

 Review will be verified, not falsified, as is hoped for by the writer of 

 the pamphlet ' that the post-office will never be reformed from 

 within, and that Ministers are determined to resist all attempts to re- 

 form it from without.' " 



Time will shew ^hich of these opinions are correct. Of late 

 Ministers have been doing nothing but undoing their remnant popu- 

 larity. A fairer opportunity was never presented than this of trying 

 back of shewing that the most important condition under which 



