to station, or travelling engines to drag the loads the entire distance. Having decided on the latter, they have, even to the present moment, laboured under the disadvantage of the want of that knowledge which experience alone can give. The engines have been constantly varied in their weight and proportions, in their magnitude and form, as the experience of each successive month has indicated. As defects became manifest they were remedied; improvements suggested were adopted; and each year produced engines of such increased power and efficiency, that their predecessors were abandoned, not because they were worn out, but because they had been outstripped in the rapid march of improvement. Add to this, that only one species of travelling engine has been effectively tried; the capabilities of others remain still to be developed; and even that form of engine which has received the advantage of a course of experiments on so grand a scale to carry it towards perfection, is far short of this point, and still has defects, many of which, it is obvious, time and experience will remove. If, then, the locomotive engine, subject thus to all the imperfections inseparable from a novel contrivance—with the restrictions on the free application of skill and capital, arising from the nature of the monopolies granted to railway companies—with the disadvantage of very limited experience, the great parent of practical improvement, having been submitted to experiments hitherto only on a limited scale, and confined almost to one form of machine;—if, under such disadvantages, such effects have been produced as are now daily witnessed by the public, what may not be looked for from this extraordinary power when the enterprise of the country shall be more unfettered—when greater fields of experience are opened—when time, ingenuity, and capital have removed or diminished existing imperfections, and have brought to light new and more powerful principles? This is not mere speculation [Pg331] on abstract possibilities, but refers to what is in actual progress. The points of greatest wealth and population—the centres of largest capital and most active industry throughout the country—will soon be connected by lines of railway; and various experiments are proposed, with more or less prospect of success, for the application of steam engines on stone roads where the intercourse is not sufficient to render railways profitable.