§ 4. REVOLUTION IN THE MEANS OF TRANSIT--Now, too, another great industrial revolution was effected. I refer to the introduction of railways, steam navigation, and the telegraph, which have done almost as much as the great inventions of the eighteenth century to revolutionize the commerce of the world. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened. In 1838 the first ocean passages to New York by steamship were accomplished by the _Great Western_ from Bristol, and the _Sirius_ from Cork; although ever since the beginning of the century small steamers and tugs had been used for coasting purposes, and on the River Clyde. In 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone patented the needle telegraph, and the Electric Telegraph Company was formed in 1846 for bringing the new inventions into general use. In 1840 the penny postage came into operation. Yet more recently the Suez Canal (1869) has shortened immensely the distance to the East. It is obvious to all how incalculably all these inventions and appliances {215} have aided the development, not only of English trade, but of the commerce of all the world. § 5. MODERN DEVELOPMENTS. OUR COLONIES--Now I do not propose, in the limits of a little work like this, to go into a detailed account of the growth of commerce since these great modern inventions. There is ample material for the student in larger works; and the statistics of our progress may be consulted in the invaluable pages of Mr Giffen’s and Professor Leone Levi’s books. Here I can only indicate in the broadest outlines the chief features of the recent developments of industry. We have followed the industrial history of England up to a period more prolific in commercial events, and more remarkable for commercial progress than any that preceded it. The experiments and tentative measures of Mr Huskisson and other statesmen paved the way for a bolder and more assured policy on the part of subsequent governments, till at length Sir Robert Peel, urged on by the Anti-Corn Law League (p. 201), and stimulated by great famine in Ireland in 1845, openly adopted the principles of Free Trade. Under his leadership the Corn Laws were repealed (1846); the tariff was entirely remodelled, and the old protective restrictions abolished, Mr Gladstone’s Budget of 1853 being particularly memorable in this direction. A great increase of trade followed the inauguration of the policy which is always associated with the great name of Cobden,[61] and the wealth of the country was even further developed. The extension of the railway system was at the same time a cause and an effect of this development, and when the great Exhibition of 1851, the precursor of several others, was held, England was able to show to all the world her immense superiority in productive and manufacturing industries. {216} A further stimulus to trade was supplied by the discovery of gold in California and Australia (1847–51), which supplied a much-needed addition to the currency of the world.