The moral and political consequences of so great a change in the powers of transition of persons and intelligence from place to place are not easily calculated. The concentration of mind and exertion which a great metropolis always exhibits, will be extended in a considerable degree to the whole realm. The same effect will be produced as if all distances were lessened in the proportion in which the speed and cheapness of transit are increased. Towns at present removed some stages from the metropolis, will become its suburbs; others, now at a day's journey, will be removed to its immediate vicinity; business will be carried on with as much ease between them and the metropolis, as it is now between distant points of the metropolis itself. Let those who discard speculations like these as wild and improbable, recur to the state of public opinion, at no very remote period, on the subject of steam navigation. Within the memory of persons who have not yet passed the meridian of life, the possibility of traversing by the steam engine the channels and seas that surround and intersect these islands, was regarded as the dream of enthusiasts. Nautical men and men of science rejected such speculations with equal incredulity, and with little less than scorn for the understanding of those who could for a moment entertain them. Yet we have witnessed steam engines traversing not these channels and seas alone, but sweeping the face of the waters round every coast in Europe. The [Pg335] seas which interpose between our Asiatic dominions and Egypt, and those which separate our own shores from our West Indian possessions, have offered an equally ineffectual barrier to its powers, and the establishment of a regular steam communication between the capitals of the Old and New World has ceased to be a question of practicability, having become merely one of commercial profit. If steam be not used as the only means of connecting the most distant points of our planet, it is not because it is inadequate to the accomplishment of that end, but because the supply of the material, from which at the present moment it derives its powers, is restricted by local and accidental circumstances.[30] We propose in the present chapter to lay before our readers some account of the means whereby the effects above referred to have been produced; of the manner and degree in which the public have availed themselves of these means; and of the improvements of which they seem to us to be susceptible.