Conveyance and extended use of coal--Consumption at various
periods--Condition of the roads in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries--Advantages of good roads--Want of
roads in Australia--Turnpike-roads--Canals--Railway of
1680--Railway statistics.
We have seen how by machinery more than thirty-five million tons of
coal--now become one of the very first necessaries of life--are
obtained, which without machinery could not be obtained at all in the
thousandth part of the quantity; and which, consequently, would be a
thousand times the price--would, in fact, be precious stones, instead of
common fuel.
Engines or machines, of some kind or other, not only keep the pits dry
and raise the coals to the surface, but convey them to the ship upon
railroads; the ship, itself a machine, carries them round all parts of
the coast; barges and boats convey them along the rivers and canals;
and, within these few years, railways have carried the coals of the
north into remote places in the southern and other counties, where what
was called "sea-coal," from its being carried coastwise, was scarcely
known as an article of domestic use. The inhabitants of such places had
no choice but to consume wood and turf for every domestic purpose.
Through the general consumption of wood instead of coal, a fire for
domestic use in France is a great deal dearer than a fire in England;
because, although the coal-pits are not to be found at every man's door,
nor within many miles of the doors of some men, machinery at the pits,
and ships and barges, and railways, which are also machinery, enable
most men to enjoy the blessings of a coal fire at a much cheaper rate
than a fire of wood, which is not limited in its growth to any
particular district. Without the machinery to bring coals to his door,
not one man out of fifty of the present population of England could have
had the power of warming himself in winter; any more than without the
machines and implements of farming he could obtain food, or without
those of the arts he could procure clothing. The sufferings produced by
a want of fuel cannot be estimated by those who have abundance. In
Normandy, very recently, such was the scarcity of wood, that persons
engaged in various works of hand, as lace-making by the pillow,
absolutely sat up through the winter nights in the barns of the farmers,
where cattle were littered down, that they might be kept warm by the
animal heat around them. They slept in the day, and were warmed by being
in the same outhouse with cows and horses at night;--and thus they
worked under every disadvantage, because fuel was scarce and very dear.
Coals were consumed in London in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but their
use was, no doubt, very limited. Shakspere, who always refers to the
customs of his own time, makes Dame Quickly speak of "sitting in my
Dolphin-chamber at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, on Wednesday in
Whitsun week." But Mrs. Quickly was a luxurious person, who had plate
and tapestry and gilt goblets. Harrison, in his 'Description of
Britain,' at the same period, says, that coal is "used in the cities and
towns that lie about the coast;" but he adds, "I marvel not a little
that there is no trade of these into Sussex and Southamptonshire; for
want thereof the smiths do work their iron with charcoal." He adds, with
great truth, "I think that far carriage be the only cause."
The consumption of coal in London in the last year of Charles II. (1685)
amounted to three hundred and fifty thousand tons. This was really a
large consumption, however insignificant it may sound when compared with
the modern demand of the metropolis. In 1801 there were imported into
London about a million tons of coals. In 1850, three million six
hundred thousand tons were brought to the London market. The average
contract price in the ten years ending 1810 was 45_s._ 6_d._; in the ten
years ending 1850 it was 18_s._ 6_d._ But in 1824 the oppressive duty of
7_s._ 6_d._ per ton on seaborne coals was reduced to 4_s._; and in 1831
the duty was wholly repealed. It is the boast of our present fiscal
system that the chief materials of manufacture, and the great
necessaries and conveniences of life, are no longer made dear by
injudicious taxation.
The chief power which produces coal and iron cheap is that of machinery.
It is the same power which distributes these bulky articles through the
country, and equalizes the cost in a considerable degree to the man who
lives in London and the man who lives in Durham or Staffordshire. The
difference in cost is the price of transport; and machinery, applied in
various improved ways, is every year lessening the cost of conveyance,
and thus equalizing prices throughout the British Islands. The same
applications of mechanical power enable a man to move from one place to
another with equal ease, cheapness, and rapidity. Quick travelling has
become cheaper than slow travelling. The time saved remains for
profitable labour.
About a hundred and ninety years ago, when the first turnpike-road was
formed in England, a mob broke the toll-gates, because they thought an
unjust tax was being put upon them. They did not perceive that this
small tax for the use of a road would confer upon them innumerable
comforts, and double and treble the means of employment.
If there were no road, and no bridge, a man would take six months in
finding his way from London to Edinburgh, if indeed he found it at all.
He would have to keep the line of the hills, in order that he might come
upon the rivers at particular spots, where he would be able to jump over
them with ease, or wade through them without danger.
When a man has gone up the bank of a river for twelve miles in one
direction, in order to be able to cross it, he may find that, before he
proceeds one mile in the line of his journey, he has to go along the
bank of another river for twelve miles in the opposite direction; and
the courses of the rivers may be so crooked that he is really farther
from his journey's end at night than he was in the morning.
He may come to the side of a lake, and not know the end at which the
river, too broad and deep for him to cross, runs out; and he may go
twenty miles the wrong way, and thus lose forty.
Difficulties such as these are felt by every traveller in an uncivilized
country. In reading books of travels, in Africa for instance, we
sometimes wonder how it is that the adventurer proceeds a very few miles
each day. We forget that he has no roads.
Two hundred years ago--even one hundred years ago--in some places fifty
years ago--the roads of England were wholly unfit for general traffic
and the conveyance of heavy goods. Pack-horses mostly carried on the
communication in the manufacturing districts. The roads were as unfit
for moving commodities of bulk, such as coal, wool, and corn, as the
sandy roads of Poland were thirty years ago, and as many still are. Mr.
Jacob, who went upon the continent to see what stores of wheat existed,
found that in many parts the original price of wheat was doubled by the
price of land conveyance for a very few miles.
In 1663 the first turnpike act, which was so offensive to some of the
people, was carried through Parliament. It was for the repair of the
"ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York," which was
declared to be "very ruinous, and become almost impassable." This was,
on many accounts, one of the most important lines of the country. Let us
see in what state it was seventeen years after the passing of the act.
In the 'Diary of Ralph Thoresby,' under the date of October, 1680, we
have this entry:--"To Ware, twenty-miles from London, a most pleasant
road in summer, and as bad in winter, because of the depth of the
cart-ruts." Take another road a little later. In December, 1703, Charles
III., King of Spain, slept at Petworth on his way from Portsmouth to
Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there by desire
of the Queen. The distance from Windsor to Petworth is about forty
miles. In the relation of the journey given by one of the prince's
attendants, he states,--"We set out at six in the morning, by
torchlight, to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save
only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) till we arrived
at our journey's end. 'Twas a hard service for the Prince to sit
fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything, and
passing through the worst ways I over saw in my life. We were thrown but
once indeed in going, but our coach, which was the leading one, and his
Highness's body-coach, would have suffered very much, if the nimble
poors of Sussex had not frequently poised it, or supported it with their
shoulders, from Godalming almost to Petworth, and the nearer we
approached the duke's house the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The
last nine miles of the way cost us six hours' time to conquer them."
From Horsham, the county-town of Sussex, about the beginning of the
reign of George III., the roads were never in such a condition as to
allow sheep or cattle to be driven on them to the London market; and
consequently, there not being sufficient demand at home to give a
remunerating price, the beef and mutton were sold at a rate far below
the average to the small population in the country, which was thus
isolated from the common channels of demand and supply.
[Illustration: Telford.]
In the Highlands of Scotland, at the beginning of the present century,
the communication from one district to another was attended with such
difficulty and danger, that some of the counties were excused from
sending jurors to the circuit to assist in the administration of
justice. The poor people inhabiting these districts were almost entirely
cut off from intercourse with the rest of mankind. The Highlands were of
less advantage to the British empire than the most distant colony.
Parliament resolved to remedy the evil; and, accordingly, from 1802 to
1817, the sum of two hundred thousand pounds was laid out in making
roads and bridges in these mountainous districts. Mark the important
consequences to the people of the Highlands, as described by Mr.
Telford, the engineer of the roads:--
"Since these roads were made accessible, wheelwrights and
cartwrights have been established, the plough has been introduced,
and improved tools and utensils are used. The plough was not
previously used in general; in the interior and mountainous parts
they frequently used crooked sticks with iron on them, drawn or
pushed along. The moral habits of the great mass of the working
classes are changed; they see that they may depend on their own
exertions for support. This goes on silently, and is scarcely
perceived until apparent by the results. I consider these
improvements one of the greatest blessings ever conferred upon any
country. About two hundred thousand pounds has been granted in
fifteen years. It has been the means of advancing the country at
least one hundred years."
There are many parts of Ireland which sustained the same miseries and
inconveniences from the want of roads as the Highlands of Scotland did
at the beginning of the present century. In 1823 Mr. Nimmo, the
engineer, stated to parliament, that the fertile plains of Limerick,
Cork, and Kerry, were separated from each other by a deserted country,
presenting an impassable barrier between them. This region was the
retreat of smugglers, robbers, and culprits of every description; for
the tract was a wild, neglected, and deserted country, without roads,
culture, or civilization. The government ordered roads to be made
through this barren district. We will take one example of the immediate
effect of this road-making, as described by a witness before
Parliament:--"A hatter, at Castle-island, had a small field through
which the new road passed; this part next the town was not opened until
1826. In making arrangements with him for his damages, he said that he
ought to make me (the engineer) a present of all the land he had, for
that the second year I was at the roads he sold more hats to the people
of the mountains alone than he did for seven years before to the high
and low lands together. Although he never worked a day on the roads, he
got comfort and prosperity by them."
The hatter of Castle-island got comfort and prosperity by the roads,
because the man who had to sell and the man who had to buy were brought
closer to each other by means of the roads. When there were no roads,
the hatter kept his goods upon the shelf, and the labourer in the
mountains went without a hat. When the labourer and the hatter were
brought together by the roads, the hatter soon sold off his stock, and
the manufacturer of hats went to work to produce him a new stock; while
the labourer, who found the advantage of having a hat, also went to work
to earn more money, that he might pay for another when he should require
it. It became a fashion to wear hats, and of course a fashion to work
hard, and to save time, to be able to pay for them. Thus the road
created industry on both sides,--on the side of the producer of hats and
that of the consumer.
Instances such as these of the want of communication between one
district and another are now very rare indeed in these islands. But if
we look to countries intimately connected with our own, we shall find no
lack of examples of a state of commercial intercourse attending a want
of roads. The gold-fields of Australia have largely stimulated the
export of manufactured goods from Great Britain. One of the colonists at
Sydney writes thus to the chief organ of intelligence in England:--"The
roads throughout the colony, bad as they were, are now worse than ever.
The inland mails cannot run by night, and stick fast and upset in all
directions by day. Communication with the interior towns is possible
only at enormous cost. The price of conveying a ton of goods from Sydney
to Bathurst, about 130 miles, is eight times the freight of the same
quantity from London to Sydney. In cost of conveyance London and
Liverpool are, in fact, only sixteen miles from Sydney by land, though
the distance by sea is 16,000. We here see daily the most striking
illustration of the truth that
'Seas but join the regions they divide.'
Cargoes are poured into the seaports with the greatest facility, and
then the distribution is suddenly checked. Hence the enormous rents of
stores, cessation of demand, and the necessity of forced sales, with the
natural consequence--heavy losses to the exporters, who perhaps wonder
how trade with Australia can be so unprofitable, scarcely suspecting one
of the main causes of its uncertainty. English merchants might do worse
than help to open up the internal communications of this continent."
The city of Sydney has a wharfage two miles in extent. The communication
from the port to the interior is thus described:--"Imagine the Great
Western Railroad, instead of terminating in a splendid station, with
every means of conveying and removing goods to roads in every direction,
ending suddenly in swamp, forest, and sand, through which, by dint of
lashing, and swearing, and unloading, and reloading, a team of bullocks
and a dray drag their Manchester goods ten miles _per diem_, at 50_l._
or 80_l._ per ton for the journey. The channel of trade is all that
civilization, science, and capital can make it, from the threshold of
the Manchester factory to the edge of the Sydney wharf. There it breaks
suddenly, and beyond all is primitive, rude, and barbarous in the means
of conveyance. The bale of goods last unloaded from the railway train is
transferred to the bullock dray, to begin its 'crawl' up the country,
costing all its freight from England for every twenty miles. It cannot
be otherwise. There are no passable roads."
[Illustration: Modern Syrian Cart.]
It is impossible to have a more vivid picture than this of the sudden
impediment which the commercial enterprise of one country receives from
the want of the commonest means of communication in another. The
bullock-cart of Syria, and the Australian bullock-cart, would be useful
instruments if they had roads to work in. But there must be general
civilization before there are extensive roads. Carts and bullocks are of
readier creation than roads. It has taken eighteen centuries to make our
English roads, and the Romans, the kings of the world, were our great
road-makers, whose works still remain:--
"labouring pioneers,
A multitude with spades and axes arm'd,
To lay hills plain, fell woods, or valleys fill,
Or where plain was raise hill, or overlay
With bridges rivers proud, as with a yoke."--PARADISE REGAINED.
What the Romans were to England, the colonized English must be to
Australia. But the discovery of great natural wealth, the vigour of the
race, the intercourse with commercial nations of the old and new world,
the free institutions which have been transplanted there without any
arbitrary meddling or chilling patronage, will effect in a quarter of a
century what the parent people, struggling with ignorant rulers and
feeble resources, have been ages in accomplishing.
It is encouraging to all nations to see what we have accomplished in
this direction.
In 1839 the turnpike-roads of England and Wales amounted to 21,962
miles, and in Scotland to 3666 miles; while in England and Wales the
other highways amounted to 104,772 miles. The turnpike-roads were
maintained at a cost of a million a year; and the parish highways at a
cost of about twelve hundred thousand pounds. There were at that time
nearly eight thousand toll-gates in England and Wales. There had been
two thousand miles of turnpike-roads, and ten thousand miles of other
highways, added to the number existing in 1814. But the improvements of
all our roads during that period had been enormous. Science was brought
to bear upon the turnpike lines. Common sense changed their form and
re-organized their material. The most beautiful engineering was applied
to raise valleys and lower hills. Mountains were crossed with ease;
rivers were spanned over by massive piers, or by bridges which hung in
the air like fairy platforms. The names of M'Adam and Telford became
"household words;" and even parish surveyors, stimulated by example,
took thought how to mend their ways.
The Canals of England date only for a hundred years back. The first Act
of Parliament for the construction of a canal was passed in 1755. The
Duke of Bridgewater obtained his first Act of Parliament in 1759, for
the construction of those noble works which will connect his memory with
those who have been the greatest benefactors of their country. The great
manufacturing prosperity of England dates from this period; and it will
be for ever associated with the names of Watt, the improver and almost
the inventor of the steam-engine,--of Arkwright, the presiding genius of
cotton-spinning,--and of Brindley, the great engineer of canals. In the
conception of the vast works which Brindley undertook for the Duke of
Bridgewater, there was an originality and boldness which may have been
carried further in recent engineering, but which a century ago were the
creators of works which were looked upon as marvels. To cut tunnels
through hills--to carry mounds across valleys--to build aqueducts over
navigable rivers--were regarded then as wild and impracticable
conceptions. Another engineer, at Brindley's desire, was called in to
give an opinion as to a proposed aqueduct over the river Irwell. He
looked at the spot where the aqueduct was to be built, and exclaimed, "I
have often heard of castles in the air, but never before was shown the
place where any of them were to be erected." Brindley's castle in the
air still stands firm; and his example, and that of his truly
illustrious employer, have covered our land with many such fabrics,
which owe their origin not to the government but to the people.
[Illustration: Brindley's Aqueduct over the Irwell.]
The navigable canals of England are more than two thousand miles in
length. For the slow transport of heavy goods they hold their place
against the competition of railroads, and continue to be important
instruments of internal commerce. When railways were first projected it
is said that an engineer, being asked what would become of the canals if
the new mode of transit were adopted, answered that they would be
drained and become the beds of railways. Like many other predictions
connected with the last great medium of internal communication, the
engineer was wholly mistaken in his prophecy.
The great principle of exchange between one part of this empire and
another part, which has ceased to be an affair of restrictions and
jealousies, has covered the island with good roads, with canals, and
finally with railways. The railway and the steam-carriage have carried
the principle of diminishing the price of conveyance, and therefore of
commodities, by machinery, to an extent which makes all other
illustrations almost unnecessary. A road with a waggon moving on it is a
mechanical combination; a canal, with its locks, and towing-paths, and
boats gliding along almost without effort, is a higher mechanical
combination; a railway, with its locomotive engine, and carriage after
carriage dragged along at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, is
the highest of such mechanical combinations. The force applied upon a
level turnpike-road, which is required to move 1800 lbs., if applied to
drag a canal-boat will move 55,500 lbs., both at the rate of 2-1/2 miles
per hour. But we want economy in time as well as economy in the
application of motive power. It has been attempted to apply speed to
canal travelling. Up to four miles an hour the canal can convey an equal
weight more economically than a railroad; but after a certain velocity
is exceeded, that is 13-1/2 miles an hour, the horse on the
turnpike-road can drag as much as the canal-team. Then comes in the
great advantage of the railroad. The same force that is required to draw
1900 lbs. upon a canal, at a rate above 13-1/2 miles an hour, will draw
14,400 lbs. upon a railway, at the rate of 13-1/2 miles an hour. The
producers and consumers are thus brought together, not only at the least
cost of transit, but at the least expenditure of time. The road, the
canal, and the railway have each their distinctive advantages; and it is
worthy of note how they work together. From every railway station there
must be a road to the adjacent towns and villages, and a better road
than was once thought necessary. Horses are required as much as ever,
although mails and post-chaises are no longer the glories of the road;
and the post finds its way into every hamlet by the united agency of the
road and the railway.
Roger North described a Newcastle railway in 1680:--"Another thing that
is remarkable is their way-leaves; for when men have pieces of ground
between the colliery and the river, they sell leave to lead coals over
their ground; and so dear that the owner of a rood of ground will expect
20_l._ per annum for this leave. The manner of the carriage is by laying
rails of timber, from the colliery down to the river, exactly straight
and parallel; and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these
rails; whereby the carriage is so easy that the horse will draw down
four or five chaldron of coals, and is an immense benefit to the
coal-merchant." Who would have thought that this contrivance would have
led to no large results till a hundred and fifty years had passed away?
Who could have believed that "the rails of timber, exactly straight and
parallel," and the "bulky carts with four rowlets exactly fitting the
rails," would have changed the face, and to a great degree the
destinies, of the world?
If we add to the road, the canal, and the railway, the steam-boat
traffic of our own coasts, we cannot hesitate to believe that the whole
territory of Great Britain and Ireland is more compact, more closely
united, more accessible, than was a single county two centuries ago. It
may be said, without exaggeration, that it would now be impossible for a
traveller in England to set himself down in any accessible situation
where the post from London would not reach him in twelve hours. When the
first edition of the 'Results of Machinery' was published in 1831, we
said that the post from London would reach any part of England in three
days; and that, "fifty years before, such a quickness of communication
would have been considered beyond the compass of human means." In
twenty-four years we have so diminished the practical amount of distance
between one part of Great Britain and another, that the post from London
to Aberdeen is carried five hundred and forty miles in little more than
twenty hours. It is this wonderful rapidity of communication, in
connection with the cheapness of postage, which has multiplied letters
five-fold since 1839, when the penny rate was introduced. In that year
the number of chargeable and franked letters distributed in the United
Kingdom was eighty-two millions; in 1853 it was four hundred and ten
millions.
[Illustration: Locomotive-Engine Factory.]
The annual returns of our railways furnish some of the most astounding
figures of modern statistics. On the 1st of January 1854 there were open
in England 5811 miles of railway; in Scotland, 995 miles; in Ireland,
834 miles. In 1853 there were one hundred and two million passengers
conveyed, who travelled one billion five hundred million miles, being an
average of nearly fifteen miles to each passenger. In England
considerably less than one-half of the passengers were by
penny-a-mile and other third-class trains; in Ireland one-half; and in
Scotland two-thirds. The receipts from goods traffic exceed those of the
passenger traffic in England and Scotland, but are less in Ireland.
These are indeed wonderful results from a system which was wholly
experimental twenty-five years ago.
[Illustration: Railway Locomotive.]
When William Hutton, in the middle of last century, started from
Nottingham (where he earned a scanty living as a bookbinder) and walked
to London and back for the purpose of buying tools, he was nine days
from home, six of which were spent in going and returning. He travelled
on foot, dreading robbers, and still more dreading the cost of food and
lodging at public-houses. His whole expenses during this toilsome
expedition were only ten shillings and eight pence; but he contented
himself with the barest necessaries, keeping the money for his tools
sewed up in his shirt-collar. If William Hutton had lived in these days,
he would, upon sheer principles of economy, have gone to London by the
Nottingham train at a cost of twenty shillings for his transit, in one
forenoon, and returned in another. The twenty shillings would have been
sacrificed for his conveyance, but he would have had a week's labour
free to go to work with his new tools; he need not have sewed his money
in his shirt-collar for fear of thieves; and his shoes would not have
been worn out and his feet blistered in his toilsome march of two
hundred and fifty miles.
A very few years ago it was not uncommon to hear men say that this
wonderful communication, the greatest triumph of modern skill, was not a
blessing;--for the machinery had put somebody out of employ. Baron
Humboldt, a traveller in South America, tells us that, upon a road being
made over a part of the great chain of mountains called the Andes, the
government was petitioned against the road by a body of men who for
centuries had gained a living by carrying travellers in baskets strapped
upon their backs over the fearful rocks, which only these guides could
cross. Which was the better course--to make the road, and create the
thousand employments belonging to freedom of intercourse, for these very
carriers of travellers, and for all other men; or to leave the mountains
without a road, that the poor guides might gain a premium for risking
their lives in an unnecessary peril? But, looking at their direct
results, we have no doubt that railroads have greatly multiplied the
employments connected with the conveyance of goods and passengers. In
1853 there were eighty thousand persons employed upon the railroads of
the United Kingdom in various capacities. We do not include those
employed in working upon lines that are not open for traffic, which
class in England amounted to twenty-five thousand persons in 1853. But
the indirect occupations called into activity by railroads are so
numerous as to defy all attempts at calculating the numbers engaged in
them. No doubt many occupations were changed by railroads;--there were
fewer coachmen, guards, postboys, waggoners, and others, on such a
post-road as that from London to York. But it is equally certain that
throughout the kingdom there are far more persons employed in conducting
the internal communication of the country, effecting that great addition
to its productive powers, without which all other production would
languish and decay. The census returns of 1851 give the number of three
hundred and eighty-six thousand males so employed, including those
engaged on our rivers, canals, and coast traffic.
[Illustration: Reindeer.]
The vast extension, and the new channels, of our foreign commerce have
been greatly affected by the prodigious facilities of our internal
communication. They have created, in a measure, special departments of
industry, which can be most advantageously pursued in particular
localities; but which railways and steam-vessels have united with the
whole kingdom, with its colonies, with the habitable globe. The reindeer
connects the Laplander with the markets of Sweden, and draws his sledge
over the frozen wilds at a speed and power of continuance only rivalled
by the locomotive. The same beneficent Providence which has given this
animal to the inhabitant of the polar regions,--not only for food, for
clothing, but for transport to associate him with some civilization,--has
bestowed upon us the mighty power of steam, to connect us with the
entire world, from which we were once held to be wholly separated.
[Illustration: Beaver.]