fertility would do situated at a greater distance. This is
peculiarly the case with kitchen-gardens, and pasture-land suited
for the purposes of fattening cattle, or feeding such as are
required for the dairy. In all these cases, and others which might
be mentioned, the performance of a long journey affects very
injuriously the quality and value of the several articles, and hence
the demand for farms and fields not exposed to this drawback has
naturally raised their value. Now railways, as they abridge space by
means of speed, have had a tendency to increase the value of pasture
and garden ground lying at, comparatively speaking, a very great
distance around cities. It is now no unusual thing for the
inhabitants of cities such as London, Liverpool, and Manchester, to
use at breakfast milk or cream which has travelled thirty or forty
miles the very morning it is consumed, and at dinner to partake of
vegetables whose place of growth was more than a hundred miles
removed from the stall at which they were sold.

The railway system has had a marked effect upon the state of the
money-market of the commercial world in general, and of this country
in particular. From the successful experiment made in 1830 in steam
locomotion between Liverpool and Manchester, this new method of
transit has been developing itself with a rapidity to which no
parallel is to be found in the history of mercantile enterprise.
Keeping out of view entirely the large sums which were recklessly
squandered during the railway mania in mere gambling transactions
and bubble schemes, there has been actually sunk in the construction
and working of lines up to the present time more than L.200,000,000
sterling. Before railways were called into existence, by far the
larger portion of this enormous capital was divided into a great
number of comparatively small sums, invested in a corresponding