[3] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 252. [4] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 432. [5] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 531. [6] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 594. [7] Chisholm, _Speeches and Letters_, vol. i, p. 600. {91} CHAPTER V RAILWAYS AND IMPERIAL CONSOLIDATION In 1825 a train of cars, carrying coal, drawn by a steam locomotive, ran from Stockton to Darlington in Lancashire. In a week the price of coals in Darlington fell from eighteen shillings to eight shillings and sixpence. In 1830 the 'Rocket,' designed by George Stephenson, ran from Liverpool to Manchester at a rate of nearly forty miles an hour, and the possibilities of the new method of transportation became manifest. But the jealousy of the landed interest, eager to maintain the beauty and the privacy of the countryside, retarded till the forties the growth of English railways. Meanwhile, by the use of railways the United States altered her whole economic life and outlook. In 1830 she had twenty-three miles of railway, five years later over a thousand, and by 1840 twenty-eight hundred miles; and thereafter till 1860 she almost doubled her mileage every five years. {92} In the meantime Canada lagged behind, though in no other country were the steel bands eventually to play so important a part in creating national unity. The vision of Lord Durham first saw what the railway might do for the unification of British North America. 'The formation of a railroad from Halifax to Quebec,' he wrote in 1839, 'would entirely alter some of the distinguishing characteristics of the Canadas.' Even before this, young Joseph Howe had seen what the steam-engine might do for his native province, and in 1835 he had advocated, in a series of articles in the _Nova Scotian_, a railway from Halifax to Windsor. Judge Haliburton was an early convert; and in 1837 he makes 'Sam Slick' harp again and again on the necessity of railways. 'A railroad from Halifax to the Bay of Fundy' is the burden of many of Sam's conversations, and its advantages are urged in his most racy dialect. But the world laughed at Haliburton's jokes and neglected his wisdom. Though in 1844 the British government directed the survey of a military road to unite Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec, and though in 1846 the three provinces joined to pay the expenses of such a survey, which was completed in 1848, British {93} North America was for the ten years which followed Lord Durham's Report too busy assimilating his remedy of Responsible Government to have much energy left for practical affairs. But in 1848, along with the triumph of the Reformers alike in the Canadas, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, railways succeeded Responsible Government as the burning political question, and to no man did their nation-building power appeal with greater force than to Howe.