"Twelve years of experience have convinced us that the Western Railroad is wholly inadequate to the prompt, rapid and cheap transportation of the commodities so extensively consumed by the people of the New England States. To illustrate the diversion of trade from the natural route to Boston via Albany, occasioned by the incapacity of the Western road to meet the wants of commerce, we call your attention to the article of flour. We collate our facts from reports of the Boston Board of Trade and the official reports of the Western Railroad. In 1865, the Western road, according to its own report, transported from Albany and Troy to Boston, one hundred and fifty thousand barrels less than it did in 1847, nearly twenty years ago. During the thirteen years, including 1848 and 1860, the average of its transportation of this article, per annum, between the Hudson and Boston was 287,698 barrels. For the same period, there were received in Boston, via other and more circuitous routes, an average per annum of 670,233 barrels. The next four years, including 1861 and 1864, the average per annum by the Western road was 572,637 barrels. Boston received from other routes an average, per annum for the same period, of 824,937 barrels. Now, we hold that, by the natural laws of trade, most of this vast quantity of flour, which reaches Boston in these roundabout ways, would have left the Hudson river at Albany and Troy, had the requisite facilities for a cheap and rapid transportation been afforded. About one-fourth of the average quantity received in Boston from other routes, for the four years named above, reached that place via the Grand Trunk Railway and Portland, aggregating 956,945 barrels. Taking Detroit as the starting point, the distance from there to Boston via Portland, is 228 miles greater than the route to Boston via Albany. Yet, owing to the inadequate railroad facilities between Albany and Boston, the consignors of this flour prefer to send it via Portland, and pay the charges on 228 miles of additional distance. What is true of the article of flour is equally true of all the staple commodities produced at the West and consumed by the New England States. Large quantities were last year turned aside at Rochester and other points in our own State, to say nothing of points west of Buffalo, and sent to Boston and contiguous localities via the New York and Erie Railroad. Boston is even now receiving flour from Albany, Troy and Schenectady, by way of Rutland, a distance of some fifty miles further than by the Western road.