140 STAGE- CO A CH AND MAIL 'IN DA\ 'S OF 1 ^OJ^E 



between London and the great mannfacturing 

 towns at length l)ecame crowded with goods, and 

 had it not l3een for the railways, they must at an 

 early date have become altogether inadequate, and 

 an era of great highway improvement and widening 

 have set in, notAvithstanding that quite two-thirds 

 of the goods traffic at that time was water-borne, 

 and went l^y those canals with which the genius 

 of Brindley and Telford, and the enterprise of the 

 Duke of Bridgewater and others, had half a century 

 earlier iutersected the trade routes and manufac- 

 turing centres of the country. 



It is at once instructive and interesting here to 

 glance at the figures prepared by the promoters of 

 the London and Birmingham Railway, opened in 

 1838, by Avhicli they argued the pressing need of a 

 railway, which should carry cheaper and quicker. 

 They gave several sets of estimates, whose discre- 

 pancies are to be accounted for by the increasing 

 volume of traffic ; but, to reduce their figures to 

 round numbers, it seems that in the year before 

 the line was begun, the annual average of goods 

 despatched ])etween Birmingham and London Avas 

 144,000 tons, carried at rates of from fivepence to 

 sixpence a mile per ton by the " Ply-boats " on the 

 canal and by the vans and waggons. By canal 

 the annual expenditure Avas £227,000, by road 

 £113,000. Passengers, numberins: 488,342, at an 

 average of twopence a head per mile on the 109 

 miles, spent £447,646 in travelling. 



To those Avho unfailingly see the wise direction 

 of Providence in everything, it Avould seem that 



