Every one conversant with trade must admit that goods can be carried as cheap from any port in Europe to New York as to Portland. The distance from New York to Detroit, _via_ Albany and Suspension Bridge, is six hundred and eighty-two miles, or one hundred and ninety-eight miles less than from Portland to Detroit. Goods ought certainly to be carried cheaper from New York to Detroit than by a route near two hundred miles further. We learn that the New York Central Railroad Company are now perfecting a plan for ticketing passengers and goods from any point in the Western, Southern, and Southwestern States, and _vice versa_. Thus at least one important advantage to the West is already apparent, growing out of the comprehensive action of the Grand Trunk managers, while the action of the New York Central is the sure precursor of a momentous era in railroad annals. The present year is likely to witness the first battle in a war for the European and domestic trade of the West, that may in the end turn the entire current into other channels. It will be a strife of giants, and the prize the most magnificent ever battled for, either in the tented field or in the nobler contests of nations for commercial supremacy. That prize is the carrying trade of an empire fast rising into manly vigor, and destined to attain to a point during the present generation that will dazzle the world with its vastness and grandeur. On one side will be arrayed the Grand Trunk Railway, with its sixty million dollars of capital, backed by the government of Canada, and sustained by every merchant of the British North American colonies, aided by powerful friends in Europe--men of character, standing and capital, who will strain every nerve to supply their darling road with business, in which they will have the sympathy of the whole English people--for in both England and Canada the Grand Trunk is looked upon as a great triumph of national engineering skill, while at the same time it gratifies the national pride, as it gives the world one more convincing proof of that indomitable pluck that is the chief secret of the great celebrity attained by the merchants of the "fast anchored isle" for commercial enterprise. On the other side will be marshaled the forces of the "Grand Trunk" lines of railroad leading to the Western States from the Atlantic seaboard. The most prominent on the list is the New York Central Railroad, with her natural allies, the Great Western of Canada, the Hudson River Railroad, and the Western Railroad of Massachusetts. Next in order, as parties in the struggle, are the New York and Erie, the Pennsylvania Central, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, not to speak of the local roads in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, that will be affected more or less in the contest for supremacy.