Results of Railway Extension A Paper Read Before the Statistical Society of London Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Results of Railway Extension: A Paper Read Before the Statistical Society of London

If a Roman Emperor, in the most prosperous age of the empire, had commanded a history to be written of that wonderful system of roads which consolidated the Roman power, and carried her laws and customs to the boundaries of the accessible world, it would have afforded a just subject for national pride. The invention and perfecting of the art of road making, its sagacious adoption by the State, its engineering triumphs, its splendid roads through Italy, through Gaul, through Spain, through Britain, through Germany, through Macedonia, through Asia Minor, through the chief islands of the Mediterranean, and through Northern Africa; all these would have been recounted as proofs of Roman energy and magnificence, and as introducing a new instrument of civilization, and creating a new epoch in the history of mankind.

A similar triumph may fairly be claimed by Great Britain. The RO mans were the great road-makers of the ancient world - the English are the great railroad makers of the modern world. The tramway was an English invention, the locomotive was the production of English genius, and the first railways were constructed and carried to success in England. We have covered with railroads the fairest districts of the United King dom, and developed railways in our colonies of Canada and India. But we have done much more than this, we have introduced them into almost every civilized country. Belgian railways were planned by George Stephenson. The great French system received an important impulse from Locke. In Holland, in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, in Norway, in Denmark, in Russia, in Egypt, in Turkey, in Asia Minor, in Algeria, in the West Indies, and in South America, Englishmen have led the way in railway enterprise and construction. To this day, wherever an under taking of more than ordinary difficulty presents itself, the aid is invoked of English engineers, English contractors, English navvies, and English shareholders; anda large portion of the rails with which the line is laid, and the engines and rolling stock with which it is worked, are brought from England.

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