LIVERPOOL AND THE RAILROAD.

Liverpool, Nov. 7, 1833.

I have just come back from Manchester by the railroad, which is a fine piece of work; I know of nothing that gives a higher idea of the power of man. There are impressions which one cannot describe; such is that of being hurried along at the rate of half a mile a minute, or thirty miles an hour (the speed of the train as we started from Manchester,) without being the least incommoded, and with the most complete feeling of security, for only one accident has happened since the opening of the road, and that was owing to the imprudence of the individual who perished. You pass over and under roads, rivers, and canals; you cross other railroads, and a great number of other roads, without any trouble or confusion. The great forethought and spirit of order which in England they suck in with their mothers' milk, preside in every part, and make it impossible that the trains should fall foul of each other, or that the cars should run down unlucky travellers, or the farmers' wagons; all along the route are gates, which open and shut at the precise moment of time, and watchmen on the look out. How many persons in France would be benefitted by this short trip, did it serve only as a lesson of order and forecast! And then the Mount Olive cut is as well worth seeing as Roland's Breach; the Wapping tunnel will bear a comparison with the caves of Campan; the dike across Chat Moss seems to me as full of interest as the remains of the most famous Roman ways, not excepting even the Appian itself; and there is a column, which, though only a chimney for a steam-engine, is not, perhaps, less perfect in its proportions than Pompey's Pillar. Many tourists, even persons who have not been made weary of sight-seeing in Switzerland and Italy, would find Chester Bridge, which is not, indeed, on the road, but is nevertheless very near it, quite as worthy of a visit as the Devil's Bridge; not to mention that the burning cinders which the engine strews along the route, might suggest to the traveller, without any great stretch of fancy, the idea of being transported in a fiery car, certainly the most poetical of all vehicles.

Those who doubt the policy of introducing railroads into France, and think it prudent to wait for more light, cite, among other arguments, the experiments continually making in England to apply locomotive engines to common roads, the success of which, they think, would save the expense of rails. There is no doubt that railroads, like every other new invention, are susceptible of improvement; but they will always be expensive, and while other nations keep up such schools as the Manchester and Liverpool railroad, and we stand looking on with folded arms, we shall soon find ourselves, by excess of caution, fallen behind all Europe in manufactures and commerce. As for the steam-engines of Gurney, Dance, or anybody else, there is no hope that they will enable us to save the expense of rails. I think it, indeed, very probable that engines may be made to take the place of horses on roads kept in such a state as the English highways; but upon any road whatsoever, and whatever motive power is employed, engines or horses, in order to reach a great speed, from twentyfive to thirty miles an hour, for instance, it is absolutely necessary to cut through hills, and to fill up or bridge over the valleys, just as is done for railroads. Besides this great speed forbids the free circulation of vehicles, and makes it necessary to avoid the level of the frequented routes, and to pass over or under them by means of tunnels or bridges. None of the inconveniences, or liabilities of railroads would be avoided by this system; the expense would be almost the same, for the most costly portion of the work in railroads is the cuts and embankments, the bridges and viaducts; the iron required for the rails forms less than one-third of the expenditure. The expenses of superintending the routes would be the same. Besides, the road once graded, there would be a great gain in laying rails, that is, in making a complete railroad, however little might be the amount of transportation; for on a Macadamised road the force of friction is ten times that on iron rails, so that the use of these new locomotive carriages can never supply the place of railways.

The correctness of these views is proved by what is now doing in England; while the new steam carriages are getting ready for regular service, railroad companies are already at work or are organizing in all quarters. Two works are now in progress which will connect Liverpool with London, by way of Birmingham; the whole length will be one hundred and ninety-five miles. Although a trial of the new carriages is making on the Birmingham road, shares in the railroad between that town and London are at a high premium. Another company is preparing to construct a railroad from London to Bath and Bristol, a distance of one hundred and fifteen miles; companies are also formed for connecting London with Southampton, on the Havre route to Paris, and with Brighton, on the Dieppe route; other shorter works are projected. It is not that the experiments of Gurney and Dance are unknown or slighted; on the contrary, their importance is fully felt; the newspapers are full of them, and they even excite some enthusiasm. In this country, where it is a settled maxim that the labourer is worthy of his hire, I saw vessels all along the road which had been gratuitously brought and filled by the inhabitants for the use of one of these steam-carriages; unluckily the carriage did not arrive when it was expected; it had got out of order, as it too often does.

The Liverpool and Manchester railroad owes its brilliant success to the substantial and permanent nature of the interest which binds together the two towns. It would be impossible to realize a more complete division of labor; Manchester, with the country twenty miles round it, is nothing but a workshop; Liverpool manufactures nothing, but merely sells what her neighbours produce. Liverpool is not, whatever the guide book may say, another Venice, rising from the waves; it is a counting-house, and nothing but a counting-house, though on a vast scale, and under the most perfect regulations, of any in the world. The business is all done in a space smaller than the Place du Carrousel, where are the handsome Exchange, the Town House, and all the banking houses, &c. At four or five o'clock each one shuts up his cell (for the offices deserve this name), and retires to his house or his country seat, for many of the residences are on the other side of the Mersey. Liverpool and Manchester are surrounded by a double and three fold series of canals; the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, the Leeds and Liverpool, the Sankey, Leigh, Bolton and Bury, Mersey and Irwell canals, without taking into account the rivers Irwell, Mersey, and Weaver, which though small, form fine bays at their mouths, and are more easily and regularly navigable than our great rivers, while the navigation is carried on with a promptitude and despatch wholly unknown in France. Since the peace these two towns have enjoyed such a high degree of prosperity, that ten years ago these means of communication, with the addition of a fine road, were found to be insufficient. The counting-house and the manufactory wished to be nearer to each other; accordingly, on the 10th of May, 1824, a memorial, signed by one hundred and fifty merchants, declared the necessity of new routes; and a railroad was decided on. The work was begun in June, 1826, and the road was opened in due form, on the 15th of September, 1830. A tunnel is now constructing, one mile and a quarter in length, which will carry the railroad into the heart of the town, and will cost about 800,000 dollars.

The chief article of English commerce, that in which it has no rival, and which opens all the ports of the world to English vessels, is cottons of all descriptions. The value of the produce and manufactures annually exported from the United Kingdom, during the last ten years, has averaged 190 millions of dollars.[E] That of cottons alone has ranged from 80 to 90 millions, and the greater part is made in Manchester and the vicinity.[F] This single fact would sufficiently explain the commercial importance of Liverpool; add to this that Liverpool is in the neighbourhood of the founderies and forges of Staffordshire and Shropshire, and the manufactories of Birmingham and Sheffield; that the diminished width of the island, in the 53d degree of latitude, enables her to reach out her hands at once to the eastern and western coasts; that she is the centre of the business between England and Ireland; that she approaches, at the same time, Scotland and Wales; that she is the head quarters of steam navigation in England, and it will be seen at a glance that Liverpool is the seat of a prodigious commerce, inferior only to that of London. Eleven thousand vessels measuring 1,400,000 tons, enter her nine docks every year; two-fifths of the whole exports of England are shipped hence, and more than one-fifth of the British customs duty, or nearly 20,000,000 dollars (equal to the total sum of the French customs), are collected here. Since the modification of the East India Company's charter, the Liverpool merchants flatter themselves with the hope of securing a great part of the India trade, which has hitherto been monopolized by London; they aspire to rival the commerce of the capital, and it must be confessed that they are taking the right road to success.

In tracing the history of Liverpool, Manchester, or any other English town, we are struck with a fact which is full of good omen for France; it is this, that a people never engages heartily and successfully in commerce and manufactures, until it feels itself safe from civil or religious despotism; but once assured on that point, it moves rapidly and right forward in its industrial career. So long as England was restrained in her franchises or her faith, she was possessed with one idea, how to throw off the yoke; once freed from this care, she has achieved in the different branches of industry what no nation has ever done before. In the beginning of the last century, not long after the expulsion of the Stuarts, when Liverpool had only 5,000 inhabitants, with no commerce but a feeble coasting trade, some of her merchants conceived the idea of competing with Bristol, which then monopolized the West Indian trade. Bristol exported to America the products of the fisheries in the German Ocean, and some fustians and checks manufactured in Germany, and the Liverpool adventurers took cargoes of Scotch stuffs; but the attempt was unsuccessful, the Scotch goods were of inferior quality. Manchester then relieved them from this difficulty; there were already some manufacturers in that place, who imitated and surpassed the German articles, and thus provided, the merchants of Liverpool were able to sustain a competition with those of Bristol. The smuggling trade with the Spanish colonies, and the slave trade, undertaken in competition with Bristol, continued to enrich Liverpool and consequently Manchester. In 1764, when Bristol fitted out 32 ships for Africa and 74 for America, Liverpool ran 105 to the former and 141 to the latter; in the same year 1589 vessels entered the port of Liverpool, while only 675 arrived at Bristol. At present Bristol is a second-rate mart compared with Liverpool; not that the former has declined; on the contrary, it is a wealthy city, with a trade tenfold what it was a hundred years ago. But in the midst of the general progress, Liverpool has advanced at high speed. It now contains 180,000 inhabitants, or, including the suburbs, 225,000, without reckoning the floating population of strangers and sailors. During the siege of Calais, when Edward III. collected all the strength of England, this town found it difficult to furnish one vessel, carrying six men; in 1829, it owned 806 vessels of 161,780 tons burthen, manned by 9,091 sailors. (See Note 4, at the end of the volume.) During the wars of the French Revolution, Liverpool was able to bear her share of the burdens of the country, and to spend 170,000 dollars annually in works of public utility and in embellishing the town. In 1797 she volunteered to raise a troop of horse and eight companies of foot at her own charge; in 1798 she raised a regiment of volunteers and the sum of 80,000 dollars, and in 1803, when Napoleon threatened England with invasion, two regiments of infantry and 600 artillerists. In the same period a host of useful and charitable institutions were founded by subscription, and the Exchange was built at the cost of 600,000 dollars. All this is the work of one century; hardly had James II. reached Saint Germain, when the first dock in Liverpool was opened; within thirty years the Mersey and Irwell were canalled. It was the same throughout England. We must not exaggerate and abuse historical parallels, but, unless we shut our eyes, it is impossible not to perceive a striking analogy between the state of England after the fall of the Stuarts, and that of France since 1830. With both people there is a feeling of profound security in regard to their liberties, a deep conviction that they have gained a decisive victory, and that they have nothing to fear from the encroachments of the civil power or of a religious corporation; the same wish to see political reforms gives rise to substantial and palpable improvement in the condition of the people, and the same disposition on the part of the government to enlighten and realize the popular will.

The old dynasties of England and France fell in consequence of their efforts to give political power to the clergy, rather than from any attempt to restore the feudal system with its brutality and its rapacity; for the deposed princes themselves were neither rapacious nor violent. The English revolution, however, was far from giving birth to irreligion; Liverpool,—which is, so to speak, of to-day, which bears the stamp, not of England as she was in the sixteenth or the fourteenth century, but of England as she was in the eighteenth century, as she is in our own time,—Liverpool is a proof of this. There is no town in France which numbers as many churches as Liverpool, where there are thirty-seven of the establishment, in addition to forty-three dissenters' chapels and meeting houses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, Quaker, Jewish, and Roman Catholic; the last have here five chapels. Most of these have been built since 1750, and nearly one half since 1800; I have a list under my eye, and the dates are 1803, 1810, 1813, 1814, 1815, 1815, 1815, 1816, 1821, 1826, 1826, 1827, 1827, 1830, 1831. Are we to believe that this analogy will hold good on our own soil, and that as she grows rich by industry, France will return to the religious sentiment? I wish it, I hope it; we are already past the time when atheism was fashionable in France; it will not, however, be under the flag of the Anglican church, or of any other protestant sect that France will rally; she must have a more imposing and pompous worship.