The railway system has had a marked effect upon the state of the money-market of the commercial world in general, and of this country in particular.  From the successful experiment made in 1830 in steam locomotion between Liverpool and Manchester, this new method of transit has been developing itself with a rapidity to which no parallel is to be found in the history of mercantile enterprise.  Keeping out of view entirely the large sums which were recklessly squandered during the railway mania in mere gambling transactions and bubble schemes, there has been actually sunk in the construction and working of lines up to the present time more than L.200,000,000 sterling.  Before railways were called into existence, by far the larger portion of this enormous capital was divided into a great number of comparatively small sums, invested in a corresponding number of different speculations.  From causes which it would be easy, but foreign to our present purpose, to explain, the profits arising from these various speculations were not only in the aggregate larger than those hitherto derived from railways, but the former speculations or investments being more temporary and convertible in their nature, secured to the parties engaging in them a far greater command over the capital employed in them.  By diverting, as the railway system has done, so much money from the ordinary channels of mercantile enterprise, in which large profits were made, and—­what is of more importance to the present remarks—­when that money was well within the command and subject to the recall of its owners; and by taking, so to speak, and locking it up in a repository which could not be opened, the circulating medium of exchange soon became a scarce commodity to those who but lately had possessed it in abundance.

But it would be very false to infer because extensive bankruptcies, and periods of severe pecuniary embarrassment, have accompanied, if not indeed been caused by the development of the railway system, that therefore that system must be an unsound and unremunerative one.  These monetary difficulties were in a great measure the consequence of over-speculation, and therefore form no sounder evidence against the utility of railways, than does over-speculation in tea condemn the prudent employment of capital in the tea-trade.  Besides which, it must ever be remembered that the judiciousness of an undertaking is not always to be judged of by its immediate results.  All investments of capital which are from their nature permanent, require time for the development of their effects, and may, as regards many of their immediate results, prove rather injurious than beneficial.  To this class of speculations railways belong.  Introduced for the purpose of facilitating locomotion, and thus improving the industry of the country, this new system of transit was calculated to produce rather an eventual and permanent, than an immediate benefit to the empire.  So long as Great Britain retains and cultivates the resources