_£_. _s._ _d._ Expenditure, as above, in actual 739,165 5 0 payments, to the 31st of May [1830] Outstanding engagements to the same 7,500 0 0 date For Walling the Slopes in sundry 6,750 0 0 places, and completing permanent Road For completing the Bridges, including 9,500 0 0 the Irwell, 6000_l._, and Parapets of the Sankey Viaduct 1400_l._, and compensation in lieu of Bridges Additional Engines, Waggons, and 17,000 0 0 Machinery, part under contract for delivery Completing Stations, Wharfs, 25,000 0 0 Warehouses, Offices, &c. Fencing at sundry places 3,000 0 0 Contingencies 12,084 15 0 [Making total cost of Railway] £820,000 0 0 No. II. _The Speech of the Rev. JOHN CORRIE_, _F.R.S._, _taken from the Report of the Town’s Meeting_, _held in Birmingham_, _March_ 4_th_, 1831, _in support of Railways_. The Rev. J. Corrie said, that having been desired to introduce the business of the Meeting, he had undertaken the task, from a conviction that it would be no difficult thing to show the superiority of railways to all the established modes of communication, and the benefits which the town of Birmingham in particular would derive from that great national line, which this Meeting had assembled to support. It was quite unnecessary to dwell upon the importance of safe, easy, and especially cheap means of intercourse. The whole history of human civilization attested it. Why did population first spread along the banks of great rivers? Why were the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile the seats of the earliest civilization? the cradles of science and the arts of life? Principally, if not entirely, from the facilities they afforded of cheap and easy communication. What raised Phœnicia to such high celebrity among ancient nations? Not a narrow strip of rocky territory, but its position on the sea shore; not its abundant harvests, but its memorable ports, its Tyre and Sidon. The name and language of the Greeks were most widely diffused; their numbers, their civilization, their progress in the sciences, in the elegant and useful arts, were most marked, when in the days of the Ptolemies they possessed the first mercantile city of the world—Alexandria,—and had colonies on every little island and rocky promontory in the whole circuit of the Mediterranean. Or if we descend to modern times, What raised Italy to its early commercial eminence but the length of its indented coast? What raised great cities on the banks of the Elbe, or the Rhine, and carried manufactures into the heart of Germany, but those great rivers? What raised Flanders,—especially what raised Holland, but its canals and sea-ports? What in more recent times