and cheapness of transit produces a double effect upon a mercantile
community: it at once enables merchants to realise the fruits of a
given speculation more quickly, which is nothing else than
transacting more business in a shorter period than before; and it
also enables them to do this increased amount of business with a
smaller amount of actual outlay--that is, to extend with safety and
profit the field of their operations beyond those boundaries which
prudence formerly marked out as the proper limits of speculation.

When we consider the amount of travelling within the island which is
requisite for carrying on the mercantile and general business of the
country, and the double saving, therefore, of time on the one hand,
and of money on the other, which is effected by means of railways,
we cannot fail to perceive that even did this new system of
locomotion economise time and labour in no other way than this
alone, its effects upon commercial transactions and on business
generally would be immense. But when we reflect that this system is
exerting the very same influence upon trade--and in a much higher
degree, so far as the outlay of money is concerned--in reference to
the carriage of goods, as in regard to that of passengers, we then
come to comprehend in some measure how fertile the railway
locomotive is in the production of the fruits of industry.

Another commercial effect of the railway system has been to equalise
the value of land, and promote the cultivation of those districts of
a country which lie considerably removed from large towns. Every one
knows that distance from market forms, as regards the cultivation of
many vegetable and animal productions, a very serious drawback.
Hence it arises that lands lying immediately around large cities
bring a far larger price than portions of ground of equal extent and