SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY.
STEAM CARRIAGES ON COMMON ROADS.
[One of the most accredited works upon this vital topic is An Historical and Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion; by Mr. Alexander Gordon, Civil Engineer. It shows the commercial, political, and moral advantages; the means by which an elemental power is obtained; the rise, progress, and description of steam-carriages; the roads upon which they may be made to travel; and the ways and means for their general introduction. This arrangement of the subject is exceedingly well executed by Mr. Gordon, who has added a series of efficient illustrations—from a diagram simplifying the high-pressure modification of the steam-engine as applied to steam-carriages, to the last completed Steam Drag and Carriage attached; while the most material points of Mr. Gordon's views are fortified by a condensation of the evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons. All this and much more is accomplished within two hundred octavo pages, which a less economical and therefore less praiseworthy editor would have expanded into a costly quarto. Mr. Gordon's work has thus been planned and executed in the right spirit: he maintains national benefits which must arise from the adoption of steam carriages, and he seeks to place his views in the hands of all who are immediately interested in the subject by means as efficient as economical. We quote a few extracts, (the most interesting to the general reader,) from the first chapter, which aims at a cursory estimate of a few of the leading commercial, political, and moral advantages which will accrue to the community by the substitution of inanimate or steam power for animate or horse power, for locomotive purposes; leaving its spirit of fairness to the just appreciation of the reader.]
Economy of Conveyance.
In a great commercial country like ours, extending its ramifications to every branch of natural and artificial produce, it is almost superfluous to remark that a vast capital is sunk annually in the mere transport of marketable commodities: and which is not only a loss to the seller as being an unproductive outlay, but entails a heavy increase of expense to the buyer also upon every article of daily consumption. Any means, therefore, that will accelerate the conveyance, and at the same time reduce materially the expense of carriage, bears upon its surface a great public gain.
Expeditious locomotion, to the commercial world more particularly, in every mercantile transaction, is equivalent to capital: and such is the vast importance of economy of time here, that no extra expense is considered as too great to accomplish the utmost speed. We have this practically illustrated in the preference which society gives to a complicated machinery put into motion at an enormous expense, to travelling by the winds of heaven which cost nothing.
To the merchant time gained is equal to money: for time occupied in travelling is just so much profitable employment lost. Time occupied in the transport of goods is equivalent to so much interest of capital spent: for a thousand pounds invested in merchandise is unproductive so many days as the transport is tedious. That part of the capital of an individual which is employed in the carrying of his goods to and from market, is so much abstracted from his means of producing more of the article in which he exerts his ingenuity and labour, whether it be in agriculture or manufacture.
Easy communication lessens the time occupied in the transport; and a saving of time lessens the distance, or our notion of distance. This effects a saving of money: and a saving of money permits of a greater employment of capital. The man who can only afford to keep one traveller soliciting orders for his goods, will thus be enabled to keep two; because the expense of travelling will be reduced a half. Or it may be, he will find it more advantageous to employ the saving in the production of a more delicate and desirable article in the way of his trade. The increased traffic from place to place will give likewise an impulse to business, which, in the present stagnant times, is most desirable. The manufacturer in Scotland will find the London market more easily arrived at: and the merchant in the metropolis will be able to get his orders more rapidly given and executed. A conveyance which, in good management, would be a weekly one, is, in bad management, a monthly one: and the carrier is obliged to quadruple his charge for the transport. To meet this charge the merchant has to add to the cost of the article, and so on throughout the various gradations of mercantile transition, until the consumer pays the necessarily increased price. Hence, whatever reduces the price of transportation, reduces the price of the commodity transported. Whatever reduces the traveller's time, reduces his claim for compensation, and (competition being always at work) he is content with a smaller profit upon his merchandise. If a scarcity of any article occurs at one point of the kingdom, the monopolist there cannot continue his increased price for any duration of time. Commerce may, in this respect, be resembled to water, for, if not obstructed, it will always circulate till it finds its level. An opening or channel being furnished, an equalised supply will make its way wherever required.
Thus we see that the strength, wealth, and happiness of a nation, depend very much upon facility of communication. The ill-defended spot in the empire is alive to the reality, that subsidies having bad roads or a tedious navigation to pass may arrive too late to present an effectual resistance to a plundering enemy. The hard-working emigrant of a remote settlement, distant from a market, feels the difficulty and loss he sustains in bringing produce to the spot where merchants and dealers meet for the purposes of exchange. A spot uncommunicated with may be visited by the honors of famine, and no channel exist for conveying thither the food required. A grievous pestilence may sweep off an isolated people before the aid of the physician can arrive to arrest its progress.