mind. By being brought into more frequent contact with one another,
individuals whose tastes and occupations are more or less similar
are naturally led to form comparisons regarding the relative merits
of their respective productions. This comparison has necessarily
sharpened invention, improved taste, and suggested improvement. It
is not too much to affirm, that there is not a single branch of
industry now pursued within this country which has not, directly or
indirectly, been benefited to an immense degree by the introduction
of railways. Having served to bring into one market far more
articles of commerce than before were exposed in it, this new mode
of locomotion has to a great extent increased throughout our
different trades and callings that element of a generous and
wholesome competition which is the most effective agent in eliciting
a high degree of skill in the cultivation of an art, or the
improvement of an invention.

To railways we are also indebted for a new application to practical
usefulness of one of the most powerful elements in nature's
laboratory: we refer to the employment of electricity in the
transmission of thought. Although the wondrous powers and properties
of the electric telegraph were known long before the introduction of
the railway system, they were not till then made to minister, as
they now do, to the information of man. By providing facilities
towards laying and protecting the delicate machinery along which
electricity was to perform its marvellous exploits, railways have
directly contributed to apply and develop the resources of one of
the most useful and wonderful of inventions, which even in its first
stage of infancy has wrought a perfect revolution in the mode of
transmitting intelligence; and which promises at no very distant day
to play the same part among the continents and islands of the globe