Proportioned to the passenger traffic of other English railways, the London and North-Western Company is deficient as regards numbers, for although it has on its system Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and almost all the leading manufacturing bee-hives in the north of England, it is the sole railway having its terminus in London, that does not encourage short local and _Sunday_ traffic. Nevertheless the number of passengers carried on the London and North-Western in 1866 was 20,811,173, which however is less than a tenth (excluding the holders of 97,147 periodical tickets) of the total number (251,862,715) conveyed on all the railways of the United Kingdom in 1865. The returns before us do not enable us to state the relative proportions of classes of passengers carried by the London and North-Western, but, at all events, we know that they exceed two-thirds of the population of Great Britain and Ireland, which, according to the estimate of the Registrar-General, published a few days ago, was 30,157,239 in June, 1867. The estimated population of London and of its suburbs, comprised within a circle of twelve miles from the General Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, is, at present, 3,521,267, which is more than the population of half-a-dozen German Principalities;[7] more than half that of Ireland,[8] and equal to that of all Scotland. Those desirous of knowing the component parts of the metropolitan population, and how it is distributed over its area of 687 square miles, are referred to the recently published vigorous and able statistical vindication of the City of London,[9] by its distinguished and learned Chamberlain, Mr. Benjamin Scott. Here let us indicate a few facts illustrating the motive habits of the immense London population. In the twelve months ending the 30th of June, 1867, the number of passengers conveyed on the Metropolitan Railway—4½ miles in length—were 22,458,067, or 1,646,894 more than on the whole system of the London and North-Western Railway in 1866. In the same twelve months, the London General Omnibus Company, which owns about seven-eighths of those vehicles that ply in the metropolis, carried 42,995,910. These, independent of steam-boat passengers, the number of which we are not able to state, our application to the secretary of one of the companies for information not having been replied to; independent also of the persons who travelled in the 6,000 cabs that are licensed for London, and independent, finally, of the persons conveyed in the innumerable vehicles which are unceasingly circulating during about sixteen hours every day through every portion of the great metropolis.[10]