1825.] 
of Watt. Did Watt, when endeavour- 
ing to apply steam power effectually 
in draining the mines of Cornwall— 
was it possible that he could—antici- 
pate that vast amount of manufacture 
which, within a few years, it was de- 
stined to put in motion? Was it pos- 
sible he could see that the power he 
was then nurturing into existence 
would, in a very short period, be ap- 
plied in every branch of our countless 
manufactures >—would be employed in 
the coarsest and most stupendous, in 
the finest and most delicate operations? 
-—that, despite the power of winds and 
waves, it would speed the vessel across 
the ocean ? or, by means of rail-roads, 
propel our carriages and waggons with 
a velocity that would heretofore have 
been deemed visionary, and a cheapness 
that should supersede the most penu- 
rious calculation ? 
What would our manufactures have 
been, but for the discovery of steam 
power ?* What would have become of 
our most valuablet mines, but for this 
resistless power? The vast mineral 
products, lodged in the bosom of our 
mountains, would have been unavail- 
able—our most productive mines would 
have been flooded up. 
Again, the advantages of rail-roads 
spring entirely from the application of 
steam power to them. Animal power 
would not have done: it would have 
presented very few advantages over 
coaches and vans in the conveyance of 
passengers and goods. The advantage, 
in the transit of passengers, would have 
been none; and, in that of commodi- 
ties, something in speed perhaps, but 
little or nothing in cheapness. But 
application of steam, at once, changes 
the whole matter. In the first place, 
it is immensely cheaper than animal 
power; in the next place, when the 
machinery shall be properly adapted to 
the purpose (a desideratum which me- 
chanies will doubtless soon accomplish) 
a very small relative power will be ca- 
pable of producing a very high degree 
of velocity; say ten or twelve miles an 
hour, or possibly more; and the pro- 
gress of improvement and simplification 
will admit of no limit. 
Those who may think me sanguine, 
I refer to the improvements which have 
taken place within the last thirty years. 
Let any man compare the Liverpool 
and New York Packets,—their princely 
LE oe aoe A ee aS 
* And how could the present national 
debt have been contracted, and the present 
burthen of taxation endured ?—Eprr. 
Mechanics’ Institutions. 
133 
accommodation, the shortness of the 
passage—with those, say, of some 
twenty years ago. Instead of the 
clumsy transport vessels of those days, 
we have now absolutely floating palaces ; 
instead of their. low ill-fitted cabins, 
we have all the furniture and accom- 
modations of a-drawing-room. Instead 
of paying fifty or sixty pounds, we now 
pay thirty guineas; for which we have 
accommodations, provisions, wines and 
spirits, which could not be surpassed 
by any hotel in London; and, lastly, 
instead of being tossed about, for 
two months, or ten weeks, the pas- 
sage is performed, on an average, 
in twenty or twenty-five days. Yet 
we are not arrived at any limit—the 
next twenty years will probably work 
as great a melioration. A passage 
across the Atlantic, or to the East- 
Indies, in a steam-packet, may become 
as common and as safe a transit, as now 
from London to Edinburgh, or from 
Liverpool to Dublin. 
A similar march of advancement 
might be traced in almost all the 
departments of mechanical industry. 
What may be the future triumphs of 
the arts must be reserved for the know- 
ledge of posterity. The spirit of me- 
chanical invention is still in its infancy. 
It is not twenty years* since the first 
steam-boat floated its banners on the 
waters of the Hudson; and little more 
than half that interval since the first 
was seen, in this country, on the Clyde; 
and some years elapsed before the 
steam navigation of the Clyde repaid 
the owners. Some unfortunate acci- 
dents tended still farther to depress the 
public enterprize in the cultivation “a 
this 
* Dr. Darwin, however (who, though 
his poetry be sometimes too philosophical, 
and his philosophy sometimes too poetical, 
was, nevertheless, with all his allegorical 
hyperbole, and all his sacrifices to volup- 
tuous mellifluence in the mechanism of his 
verse, a man of genius), had prophetically 
anticipated this invention. The second edi- 
tion of his Botanie Garden, now lying be- 
fore us, was published in 1791 (thirty-four 
years ago ;) and from the first canto (v. 289) 
we transcribe the following passage—even 
the wildest speculations of which scarcely 
now appear to be extravagant.—Dprr. 
Soon shall thy arm, Unconquer’d Steam ! afar 
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; 
Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear 
The flying chariot through the fields of air. 
—Fair crews triumphant, leaning from above, 
Shall wave their fluttering ’kerchiefs as they move ; 
Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowd, 
And armies shrink beneath the shadowy cloud. 
