I have just come back from Manchester by the railroad, which is a fine
piece of work; I know of nothing that gives a higher idea of the power
of man. There are impressions which one cannot describe; such is that
of being hurried along at the rate of half a mile a minute, or thirty
miles an hour (the speed of the train as we started from Manchester,)
without being the least incommoded, and with the most complete feeling
of security, for only one accident has happened since the opening
of the road, and that was owing to the imprudence of the individual
who perished. You pass over and under roads, rivers, and canals; you
cross other railroads, and a great number of other roads, without any
trouble or confusion. The great forethought and spirit of order which
in England they suck in with their mothers' milk, preside in every
part, and make it impossible that the trains should fall foul of each
other, or that the cars should run down unlucky travellers, or the
farmers' wagons; all along the route are gates, which open and shut at
the precise moment of time, and watchmen on the look out. How many
persons in France would be benefitted by this short trip, did it serve
only as a lesson of order and forecast! And then the Mount Olive cut is
as well worth seeing as Roland's Breach; the Wapping tunnel will bear
a comparison with the caves of Campan; the dike across Chat Moss seems
to me as full of interest as the remains of the most famous Roman ways,
not excepting even the Appian itself; and there is a column, which,
though only a chimney for a steam-engine, is not, perhaps, less perfect
in its proportions than Pompey's Pillar. Many tourists, even persons
who have not been made weary of sight-seeing in Switzerland and Italy,
would find Chester Bridge, which is not, indeed, on the road, but is
nevertheless very near it, quite as worthy of a visit as the Devil's
Bridge; not to mention that the burning cinders which the engine
strews along the route, might suggest to the traveller, without any
great stretch of fancy, the idea of being transported in a fiery car,
certainly the most poetical of all vehicles.
Those who doubt the policy of introducing railroads into France, and
think it prudent to wait for more light, cite, among other arguments,
the experiments continually making in England to apply locomotive
engines to common roads, the success of which, they think, would save
the expense of rails. There is no doubt that railroads, like every
other new invention, are susceptible of improvement; but they will
always be expensive, and while other nations keep up such _schools_
as the Manchester and Liverpool railroad, and we stand looking on
with folded arms, we shall soon find ourselves, by excess of caution,
fallen behind all Europe in manufactures and commerce. As for the
steam-engines of Gurney, Dance, or anybody else, there is no hope
that they will enable us to save the expense of rails. I think it,
indeed, very probable that engines may be made to take the place of
horses on roads kept in such a state as the English highways; but
upon any road whatsoever, and whatever motive power is employed,
engines or horses, in order to reach a great speed, from twentyfive
to thirty miles an hour, for instance, it is absolutely necessary to
cut through hills, and to fill up or bridge over the valleys, just
as is done for railroads. Besides this great speed forbids the free
circulation of vehicles, and makes it necessary to avoid the level
of the frequented routes, and to pass over or under them by means of
tunnels or bridges. None of the inconveniences, or liabilities of
railroads would be avoided by this system; the expense would be almost
the same, for the most costly portion of the work in railroads is the
cuts and embankments, the bridges and viaducts; the iron required for
the rails forms less than one-third of the expenditure. The expenses
of superintending the routes would be the same. Besides, the road
once graded, there would be a great gain in laying rails, that is,
in making a complete railroad, however little might be the amount of
transportation; for on a Macadamised road the force of friction is
ten times that on iron rails, so that the use of these new locomotive
carriages can never supply the place of railways.
The correctness of these views is proved by what is now doing in
England; while the new steam carriages are getting ready for regular
service, railroad companies are already at work or are organizing
in all quarters. Two works are now in progress which will connect
Liverpool with London, by way of Birmingham; the whole length will
be one hundred and ninety-five miles. Although a trial of the new
carriages is making on the Birmingham road, shares in the railroad
between that town and London are at a high premium. Another company
is preparing to construct a railroad from London to Bath and Bristol,
a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles; companies are also
formed for connecting London with Southampton, on the Havre route to
Paris, and with Brighton, on the Dieppe route; other shorter works
are projected. It is not that the experiments of Gurney and Dance are
unknown or slighted; on the contrary, their importance is fully felt;
the newspapers are full of them, and they even excite some enthusiasm.
In this country, where it is a settled maxim that the labourer is
worthy of his hire, I saw vessels all along the road which had been
gratuitously brought and filled by the inhabitants for the use of one
of these steam-carriages; unluckily the carriage did not arrive when it
was expected; it had got out of order, as it too often does.
The Liverpool and Manchester railroad owes its brilliant success to the
substantial and permanent nature of the interest which binds together
the two towns. It would be impossible to realize a more complete
division of labor; Manchester, with the country twenty miles round
it, is nothing but a workshop; Liverpool manufactures nothing, but
merely sells what her neighbours produce. Liverpool is not, whatever
the guide book may say, another Venice, rising from the waves; it
is a counting-house, and nothing but a counting-house, though on a
vast scale, and under the most perfect regulations, of any in the
world. The business is all done in a space smaller than the _Place du
Carrousel_, where are the handsome Exchange, the Town House, and all
the banking houses, &c. At four or five o'clock each one shuts up his
cell (for the offices deserve this name), and retires to his house or
his country seat, for many of the residences are on the other side of
the Mersey. Liverpool and Manchester are surrounded by a double and
three fold series of canals; the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, the Leeds
and Liverpool, the Sankey, Leigh, Bolton and Bury, Mersey and Irwell
canals, without taking into account the rivers Irwell, Mersey, and
Weaver, which though small, form fine bays at their mouths, and are
more easily and regularly navigable than our great rivers, while the
navigation is carried on with a promptitude and despatch wholly unknown
in France. Since the peace these two towns have enjoyed such a high
degree of prosperity, that ten years ago these means of communication,
with the addition of a fine road, were found to be insufficient. The
counting-house and the manufactory wished to be nearer to each other;
accordingly, on the 10th of May, 1824, a memorial, signed by one
hundred and fifty merchants, declared the necessity of new routes; and
a railroad was decided on. The work was begun in June, 1826, and the
road was opened in due form, on the 15th of September, 1830. A tunnel
is now constructing, one mile and a quarter in length, which will carry
the railroad into the heart of the town, and will cost about 800,000
dollars.
The chief article of English commerce, that in which it has no rival,
and which opens all the ports of the world to English vessels, is
cottons of all descriptions. The value of the produce and manufactures
annually exported from the United Kingdom, during the last ten years,
has averaged 190 millions of dollars.[E] That of cottons alone has
ranged from 80 to 90 millions, and the greater part is made in
Manchester and the vicinity.[F] This single fact would sufficiently
explain the commercial importance of Liverpool; add to this that
Liverpool is in the neighbourhood of the founderies and forges of
Staffordshire and Shropshire, and the manufactories of Birmingham
and Sheffield; that the diminished width of the island, in the 53d
degree of latitude, enables her to reach out her hands at once to the
eastern and western coasts; that she is the centre of the business
between England and Ireland; that she approaches, at the same time,
Scotland and Wales; that she is the head quarters of steam navigation
in England, and it will be seen at a glance that Liverpool is the seat
of a prodigious commerce, inferior only to that of London. Eleven
thousand vessels measuring 1,400,000 tons, enter her nine docks every
year; two-fifths of the whole exports of England are shipped hence, and
more than one-fifth of the British customs duty, or nearly 20,000,000
dollars (equal to the total sum of the French customs), are collected
here. Since the modification of the East India Company's charter, the
Liverpool merchants flatter themselves with the hope of securing a
great part of the India trade, which has hitherto been monopolized by
London; they aspire to rival the commerce of the capital, and it must
be confessed that they are taking the right road to success.
In tracing the history of Liverpool, Manchester, or any other English
town, we are struck with a fact which is full of good omen for France;
it is this, that a people never engages heartily and successfully in
commerce and manufactures, until it feels itself safe from civil or
religious despotism; but once assured on that point, it moves rapidly
and right forward in its industrial career. So long as England was
restrained in her franchises or her faith, she was possessed with one
idea, how to throw off the yoke; once freed from this care, she has
achieved in the different branches of industry what no nation has ever
done before. In the beginning of the last century, not long after the
expulsion of the Stuarts, when Liverpool had only 5,000 inhabitants,
with no commerce but a feeble coasting trade, some of her merchants
conceived the idea of competing with Bristol, which then monopolized
the West Indian trade. Bristol exported to America the products of
the fisheries in the German Ocean, and some fustians and checks
manufactured in Germany, and the Liverpool adventurers took cargoes
of Scotch stuffs; but the attempt was unsuccessful, the Scotch goods
were of inferior quality. Manchester then relieved them from this
difficulty; there were already some manufacturers in that place, who
imitated and surpassed the German articles, and thus provided, the
merchants of Liverpool were able to sustain a competition with those of
Bristol. The smuggling trade with the Spanish colonies, and the slave
trade, undertaken in competition with Bristol, continued to enrich
Liverpool and consequently Manchester. In 1764, when Bristol fitted
out 32 ships for Africa and 74 for America, Liverpool ran 105 to the
former and 141 to the latter; in the same year 1589 vessels entered
the port of Liverpool, while only 675 arrived at Bristol. At present
Bristol is a second-rate mart compared with Liverpool; not that the
former has declined; on the contrary, it is a wealthy city, with a
trade tenfold what it was a hundred years ago. But in the midst of the
general progress, Liverpool has advanced at high speed. It now contains
180,000 inhabitants, or, including the suburbs, 225,000, without
reckoning the floating population of strangers and sailors. During
the siege of Calais, when Edward III. collected all the strength of
England, this town found it difficult to furnish one vessel, carrying
six men; in 1829, it owned 806 vessels of 161,780 tons burthen, manned
by 9,091 sailors. (See Note 4, at the end of the volume.) During the
wars of the French Revolution, Liverpool was able to bear her share
of the burdens of the country, and to spend 170,000 dollars annually
in works of public utility and in embellishing the town. In 1797 she
volunteered to raise a troop of horse and eight companies of foot at
her own charge; in 1798 she raised a regiment of volunteers and the
sum of 80,000 dollars, and in 1803, when Napoleon threatened England
with invasion, two regiments of infantry and 600 artillerists. In the
same period a host of useful and charitable institutions were founded
by subscription, and the Exchange was built at the cost of 600,000
dollars. All this is the work of one century; hardly had James II.
reached Saint Germain, when the first dock in Liverpool was opened;
within thirty years the Mersey and Irwell were canalled. It was the
same throughout England. We must not exaggerate and abuse historical
parallels, but, unless we shut our eyes, it is impossible not to
perceive a striking analogy between the state of England after the
fall of the Stuarts, and that of France since 1830. With both people
there is a feeling of profound security in regard to their liberties,
a deep conviction that they have gained a decisive victory, and that
they have nothing to fear from the encroachments of the civil power
or of a religious corporation; the same wish to see political reforms
gives rise to substantial and palpable improvement in the condition of
the people, and the same disposition on the part of the government to
enlighten and realize the popular will.
The old dynasties of England and France fell in consequence of their
efforts to give political power to the clergy, rather than from any
attempt to restore the feudal system with its brutality and its
rapacity; for the deposed princes themselves were neither rapacious nor
violent. The English revolution, however, was far from giving birth to
irreligion; Liverpool,--which is, so to speak, of to-day, which bears
the stamp, not of England as she was in the sixteenth or the fourteenth
century, but of England as she was in the eighteenth century, as she
is in our own time,--Liverpool is a proof of this. There is no town
in France which numbers as many churches as Liverpool, where there
are thirty-seven of the establishment, in addition to forty-three
dissenters' chapels and meeting houses, Presbyterian, Baptist,
Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker, Jewish, and Roman Catholic; the last
have here five chapels. Most of these have been built since 1750, and
nearly one half since 1800; I have a list under my eye, and the dates
are 1803, 1810, 1813, 1814, 1815, 1815, 1815, 1816, 1821, 1826, 1826,
1827, 1827, 1830, 1831. Are we to believe that this analogy will hold
good on our own soil, and that as she grows rich by industry, France
will return to the religious sentiment? I wish it, I hope it; we are
already past the time when atheism was fashionable in France; it will
not, however, be under the flag of the Anglican church, or of any other
protestant sect that France will rally; she must have a more imposing
and pompous worship.