248 



df Lyons, tlie difficulty being surmounted, broke bis looms in 1806, 

 and raised a statue to his memory in 1840. 



The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was at first opposed with 

 every species of ridicule and invective. One member of Parliament 

 declared his opinion, that a railway could never enter into successful 

 competition with a canal, for even with the best locomotive engine the 

 speed could never exceed three and a half miles per hour. 



Traveling by stage coach, I crossed the Liverpool and Manchester 

 Railway on the day that the engine was making its trial trip, and be- 

 fore a passenger had traveled on that line. The laborers were running 

 from the fields to gaze on the locomotive, and the "happy homes of 

 England" were pouring out their inmates to see the wonderful novelty. 

 This was the beginning of a system which has changed the face of the 

 world. See what steam navigation and railways have done for Ameri- 

 ca. Look at Detroit, the commercial capital of Michigan, rising in 

 wealth and importance, with lines of steamboats which i-each to Que- 

 bec on one side, and the extremity of Lake Superior on the other, 

 whilst her railways terminate with the Mississippi and the Atlantic, and 

 will soon reach the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Yet the inventors of steam- 

 boats and railways had to struggle against trials and discouragements ; 

 they had to bear the pangs of hope deferred, and " the spurns which 

 : patient merit from the unworthy takes." They were scoffed at as vis- 

 ionary enthusiasts, and brainless people shook their empty heads and 

 cried out "theory," "theory;" but they persevered, and now the world 

 resounds with their fame, and continents are intersected, and oceans 

 bridged across by their inventions. 



The cause of the potato rot, and the means of preventing it, are 

 questions which have agitated the agricultural world for the last ten 

 years. It is time to set them at rest. I do not pretend to learning or 

 knowledge, but I can say with certainty that the potato disease is atmos- 

 pheric — that it is conveyed with rain and dews — that it generally ap- 

 pears after lightning, and that there are very strong reasons for believ- 

 ing that the destructive ingredient which occasions it is nitric acid. 



I can also state that I have raised excellent crops of potatoes during 

 the prevalence of the rot, by observing the rules laid down in this 

 essay. 



