XLII. 1845. 10. effect of the working classes. CHAP. vive the empire which gave it birth. It has brought to the inhabitants of the towns the means of going to the country, and to the inhabitants of the country the Beneficial means of going into the towns. "Railways," says Miss railway sys- Martineau, "were to run not only along the margin of tem on the the southern part of the island, and round the margin of the misty Scottish mountains, but through the vale in which Furness Abbey had hitherto stood shrouded, and among old cathedrals, of which the traveller might see half-a-dozen in a day. It was on Easter Monday 1844 that excursion trips with return tickets were first heard of. Here began the benefits of cheap pleasuretrips to the hard workers of the nation. The process had begun from which incalculable blessings were to accrue to the mind, morals, and manners of the people. From this time the exclusive class was to meet the humbler classes face to face. The peer, and the manufacturer, and the farmer, were henceforth to meet and talk in the railway carriage, and have a chance of understanding each other. The proud were to part with some of their prejudice, and the ignorant with some of their ignorance; and other walls of partition than park enclosures were to be thrown down. The operative was to see new sights hitherto quite out of his reachthe ocean, the mountain, the lake, and old ruins, and new inventions; and the London artisan was ere long to live within sight of trees and green fields, and yet go to his work every day. As unwholesome streets in London were pulled down, hamlets were to arise at a little distance in the country, from which the humbler classes could go and return to their daily labour in the centre of the town. The diet of millions was to be improved, fish and foreign fruits being conveyed from the town into the country, and milk, butter, and vegetables, fresh from 628, 629. the country, into the towns.1 Everybody's wants were to become known by the general communication about to be 1 Mart. ii. XLII. established, and the supply was to reach the want and CHAP. the wish. The change was vast, the prospect magnificent; but this change, like every other, had to pass at its outset through a wilderness of difficulties." 1 1845. reducing half. It can hardly be supposed that a statesman so ex- 11. perienced as Sir R. Peel was really deceived by the Bill passes flattering and fallacious appearances which the effects of railway dethe railway mania at first exhibited, or that he imagined posits to a present prospects were to be perpetual. Certain it is, however, that he acted as if he believed this really was to be the case. Carried away by the tumult of activity and temporary prosperity which pervaded the country, he did everything in his power, both as an individual and the head of the Government, to swell the mania in which it originated. By the existing rules of Parliament, a tenth of the estimated expense of every railway required to be deposited before the bill for promoting it was introduced. A committee was appointed to consider the subject in 1844, and it recommended that the depositmoney should be reduced a half, or to a twentieth, which was immediately made the foundation of a bill which obtained the sanction of Parliament in the same session. To this great concession in favour of speculation, the vast increase in it which so soon after took place, and the unbounded effects which thence arose, is in a great measure to be ascribed. The general fervour on the subject was ere long still farther inflamed by the imposing ceremony which took place at the commencement of the 1 DoubleTrent Valley Railway, when Sir R. Peel in person, with day, 300; a silver trowel, turned up the first sod, which was followed xxiii. 516, by the most enthusiastic speeches on the unbounded Reg. 1845, prospects which these undertakings were to open to the ii. 629. country.1 To appreciate the immense effect this reduction in the sums required as deposits to be paid had in stimulating these extraordinary undertakings, it is only necessary Parl. Deb. 519; Ann. 178; Mart. XLII. 1845. 12. fect in sti mulating these undertakings. CHAP. to refer to the official account of the railways, for which plans were deposited in terms of the Act of Parliament up to the 31st December 1845. The number of these Its vast ef lines for which plans were lodged was, in 1844, 248; but in 1845 it had risen to the enormous amount of 815! The sums deposited on the lines in the first year were £6,432,155, and the estimated sums to complete the undertakings were £44,927,000. In the succeeding year, however, the capital required to be paid on deposits for new projects was £59,136,000; the sum of £60,927,000 had been already expended on the lines in the course of execution; and the liabilities connected with the new projects, after deducting the deposits paid, amounted to the enormous and almost fabulous sum of £590,447,000! It is difficult to say to what state the country would have been reduced if these wild speculations had all been carried into execution; and nothing can illustrate so strongly the extreme peril of the course on which Government had now adventured, in first passing a Bank Charter Act, which in effect compelled the Bank, and all other banks, to lower their discounts to 3 per Table, Ann. cent, and then a Railway Act, which reduced the sums 178, Chron. required to be paid in deposit on the projected lines from 10 to 5 per cent.1 1 Official Reg. 1845, 13. Like many other rash and imprudent courses of conFlourishing duct, however fraught with lasting and perilous consequences, the measures of Government at this period were the revenue. attended by immediate and flattering benefits. state of trade and The path which led directly over the abyss was in the outset strewed with flowers. The prosperous condition of all the great interests in the country was unequivocally evinced in the returns of its trade, manufactures, shipping, and revenue. The imports between 1842 and 1847 rose from £65,000,000 to £90,000,000; and the exports from £47,000,000 to £58,000,000. The revenue, notwithstanding a reduction of taxation in these five years XLII. 1845. of about £6,000,000, which more than compensated CHAP. the income-tax, had advanced from £48,500,000 to £51,500,000. The shipping in the same period rose from 4,600,000 tons to above 7,000,000 tons, indicating an increase of at least fifty per cent in the bulk and weight of the exports and imports of the country. All this took place not only without any increase, but with an extraordinary diminution, in our imports of food, which, till the disastrous years 1846 and 1847, which witnessed the Irish famine, had sunk to little more than 300,000 quarters of wheat a-year! It must be confessed that this extraordinary flood of prosperity, enduring for five years immediately succeeding a corresponding period of unmitigated adversity which had preceded it, afforded a just subject of congratulation to the Prime Minister, and seemed to warrant the confidence of the country in a statesman whose magic wand had so quickly converted desolation and ruin into riches and prosperity.* 14. favourable Sir R. Peel made an adroit use of the flood of prosperity which, from a temporary cause, was thus poured Sir R.Peel's upon the country, to carry out to a much greater extent financial than he had hitherto done the new commercial policy statement. with which he conceived the well-being of the country was indissolubly wound up. He was enabled to meet the Parliament of 1845 in the most triumphant manner. The wisdom of his policy seemed to be established, beyond EXPORTS, IMPORTS, AND REVENUE of Great BRITAIN, AND SHIPPING AND -PORTER'S Progress of the Nation, pp. 356, 399, 475, 94, 90. XLII. 1845. CHAP. the possibility of doubt, by the result. Instead of the woeful tale of a deficit, which under the administration of his predecessors had so often sickened the heart of the nation, he was to come forward with the glad tidings of a large surplus. Supposing, he said, the property-tax to be continued, the revenue in the year ending 5th April 1846 would amount to £53,700,000, and the expenditure would be only £49,000,000, even after taking into account an increase of £1,000,000 for the service of the navy, which he most wisely proposed. But as £600,000 of this surplus consisted of payments from China, which Ann. Reg. would only continue a year more, he would take the Parl. Deb. income at £53,100,000, leaving a surplus of £3,400,000 497. when the additional estimates for the navy were taken into consideration.1 1845, 24; lxxvii. 455, 15. of the Income-tax, "I now approach," said Sir Robert, "the most imContinuance portant question of all, which is, how we are to dispose of this surplus. I propose to do so by continuing the and repeal income-tax, and making a great reduction in the duties direct taxes. on consumption. I would not have proposed this if I of more had not felt the strongest persuasion that by continu- |