The advantages of a line between Manchester and Liverpool were obvious. It connected the two towns--the importing and the manufacturing--which needed connexion the most; and, in fact, the harbour gained an enormous manufacturing population, and the population gained a harbour. The outlay, prodigious as it was, was found a profitable investment; but the benefits of the improvement were so great that the mere profits on the undertaking, as a pecuniary speculation, were lost sight of, in the higher view of the impetus given to the trade of these two main seats of our commercial enterprize. It became a national undertaking; Birmingham and the other wealthy towns were determined to have the same advantage; London became, of course, the great centre to which every new line tended; and in an incredibly short space of time, at an incredible expenditure of money, the iron and cotton emporiums of the north, the packet stations of the south and south-west, the agricultural and manufacturing districts of the north-east, all were moved into the actual neighbourhood of the capital. The beautiful Southampton water flowed within three hours of the Bank. Ipswich was not much further off than Hammersmith; and Bath and Bristol were but a morning's drive from Buckingham palace or Windsor. What has been the effect of all these improvements, and to what do they all tend? If the whole prosperity of a nation depended on rapidity of conveyance, there could be but one answer to the enquiry--but even in that case the prosperity must depend on rapidity of conveyance between the particular places which the railway unites--Manchester and Liverpool, Birmingham and London, and generally the great towns at the _termini_, and some throughout all of the intermediate stations, have cause to rejoice in the improvement. And land and houses in the neighbourhood have increased in value, their correspondence is conducted in half the time, and money is of course distributed in fertilizing rills by the crowds of travellers who pass through them on their way to join the train. But these advantages are local, and an opinion is now gaining ground that they are obtained at the expense of other places. What possible benefit can accrue to a town or neighbourhood near which the railway passes, but where there is no station? Can it encourage the trade of such a town as Dangley or Standon to know, that the five or six thousand beings who are whirled past them, with almost invisible rapidity, every day, arrive in Liverpool in ten hours after leaving London? On the contrary, is it not found to be directly injurious to them by the encouragement it gives to towns and villages more favourably situated; while their inns become deserted, their tradespeople are drifted out of the great stream of business, their turn-pikes are ruined, and grass grows in their streets. Let us take any one of the great lines, and see the number of towns whose ancient prosperity it has destroyed.