Page:Inland Transit - Cundy - 1834.djvu/34

 applies, of course, not only to the consumer at home, but to foreign markets. In the latter, we already, in many branches of manufacture, command a monopoly. The reduced price which we shall attain by cheapness and facility of transport will still further extend and increase our advantages. The necessary consequence will be an increased demand for manufacturing population; and this increased population again reacting on the agricultural interests, will form an increased market for that species of agricultural produce. So interwoven and complicated are the fibres which form the texture of the highly civilised and artificial community in which we live, that an effect produced on any one point, is instantly transmitted to the most remote and apparently unconnected parts of the system.

The two advantages of increased cheapness and speed, besides extending the amount of existing traffic, call into existence new objects of commercial intercourse. For the same reason that the reduced cost of transport, as I have shown, calls new soils into cultivation, it also calls into existence new markets for manufactured and agricultural produce. The great speed of transit, which has been proved to be practicable, must open a commerce between distant points in various articles, the nature of which does not permit them to be preserved so as to be fit for use beyond a certain time. Such are, for example, many species of vegetable and animal food, which, at present, are confined to markets at a very limited distance from the grower or feeder. The truth of this observation is manifested by the effects which have followed the intercourse by steam on the Irish Channel. The western towns of England have become markets for a prodigious quantity of Irish produce, which it had been previously impossible to export. If animal