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of the gross gain from cheap transport failing to exceed very considerably the 

 dead weight. That excess, whatever it may be, is the net profit of the railway 

 system. Comfort, health, ease, the saving of time, the facilitating of business, 

 and the interchange of the family affections, are substantial advantages which 

 do not immediately belong to my subject, but which ought not to be left out 

 of consideration, although we cannot reduce them to figures. 



Our roads in this country, except for a few miles outside of the pi'incipal 

 towns, are much in the condition of many of the English roads at the end of 

 the last century, when General Wade first improved the Great North E-oad 

 beyond Leeds. 



"If you'd seen but these roads before they were made, 

 You wotild hold up your hands and bless General Wade. " 



Englishmen who have only known the transition from the four-horse coach of 

 1830, so splendidly appointed and so well worked, to the railway of recent 

 date, can form no conception of the change in Victoria, or the change which 

 the railway system will produce here. It is a change from misery, not without 

 danger, to comfort and safety — a sudden leap from the middle of the eighteenth 

 to the middle of the nineteenth century. Mr. Wentworth, in 1851, said, 

 "The discovery of gold has precipitated us into a nation." The idea was 

 excellent, but the mode of expressing it was not happy ; but may we not say 

 that a well-considered railway system will go far to elevate us into a nation 1 



There is another economical result which has disclosed itself very con- 

 spicuously to those who have carefully marked the efiects of the railway 

 system in other countries. It is comprised in the phrase, " equalization of 

 of prices." It is not in itself an independent gain. It is simply the mode in 

 which the sum-total of gains from cheap transport distributes itself between 

 producers and consumers. Now, if this equalization of prices has made itself 

 manifest in countries (England for instance) where the transition Las been ordy 

 from excellent common roads to railways, how much more conspicuous will it 

 not be where the transition is from bad roads, or no roads, to railways 1 



Let me explain this phrase, "equalization of prices." It is not so much in 

 the larger productions of agriculture, such as wheat, oats, potatoes, and so forth, 

 that the equalization will appear. These, wherever practicable, are conveyed 

 by watei', by the coasting steamers ; but to some extent it will operate upon 

 such productions. It will, however, be most conspicuous in the productions 

 of the small farmers and dairymen, who raise poultry, butter, bacon, etc., for 

 the town markets. We will take a single article as an illustration, and it is 

 not of much importance whether we state the jDrices accurately. We are quite 

 at liberty to assume an arbitrary price as an illustration of the principle. 

 Eowls are now, in Dunedin, 6s. per couple. We will suppose that fowls are 

 produced in some parts of the country not very accessible to the town, or so 



