There is not an article of commerce that the railway cannot move—does not move; there is not an article of commerce that the railway does not move at speed never less than eight and generally ten times as great as it was by canal, until competition stimulated the pace of the latter. To what extent? From the once normal rate of two to that of three miles an hour—no more. But now, the merchant of London, who a few years ago could not have what he required from the manufacturing towns of the north in less than ten days, receives in the morning, goods that were in the warehouses of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, or any other of such-like towns in the north of England on the previous afternoon. The important consumers of timber, 150 to 180 miles from London attend sales there, in preference to places nearer home, and purchase largely, with such advantage that the difference of price pays the difference of railway carriage three and four times over. We once saw chests of tea, that on a fluctuation of markets to the extent of a half-penny a pound, passed twice from Liverpool to London and twice back again. They were enabled to be moved about in this way because collection, carriage and delivery cost £1. 10s. a ton, or at the rate of a fourth of a half-penny a pound for 200 miles. Fish circulates through the small as well as the great arterial systems of the kingdom with the regularity and precision of the post, because it is unceasingly carried from the fishing ports inland by the fastest trains and by those that convey the mail bags. The Irish railways alone transported 1,092 tons of salmon last year—301 tons more than in 1865,—and now, with our protected fisheries, this amount will be rapidly added to. Ice, an article of modern commerce, is already beginning to find its way south by means of the railway, and there is not the slightest reason why elevated Northern Scotland should not _grow_ the commodity, just as it has for many years been made to grow in Massachusetts, and more recently in Norway.[57] It is unnecessary to pursue this subject, for we each of us see, know, and feel that the railway is the great and grand distributor of whatever we require for our wants, and of all that energy and enterprise require for the development of national industry.