r the wilds of
Connaught, will startle when he hears of a village containing 5,644
inhabitants, and 2,020 houses, in which 620 families are returned as
engaged in trade and manufactures. Yet, such are the overgrown
villages round our overgrown metropolis. Even in this vicinity,
Chelsea contains 18,262 inhabitants; Fulham 5,903; Clapham 5,083;
Hammersmith 7,393; Kensington 10,886; Brentford, New and Old, 7,094;
and Richmond 5,219. This village of Wandsworth, in truth, is of the
size of most second-rate towns in distant counties, its main street,
of compact and well-built houses, being half a mile in length, with
several collateral ones a quarter of a mile. It also contains, or has
in its vicinity, many considerable manufactories, which flourished
exceedingly before the silly vanity of ambition and military parade
led a nation of merchants to endeavour to dictate to their foreign
customers, and forced them to subsist without their commodities! The
manufactories of Wandsworth are created or greatly aided by the pure
stream of the Wandle, and by the Surry iron rail-way, which runs from
Croydon to a spacious and busy wharf, on the Thames at this place.
They consist of dyers, calico-printers, oil-mills, iron-founderies,
vinegar-works, breweries, and distilleries. I found leisure to inspect
the two or three which were employed; and I felt renewed delight on
witnessing at this place the economy of horse-labour on the iron
rail-way. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me, as I thought of the
inconceivable millions which have been spent about Malta, four or five
of which might have been the means of extending _double lines of iron
rail-ways_ from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Milford,
Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover and Portsmouth! A reward of a single
thousand would have supplied coaches, and other vehicles of various
degrees of speed, with the best tackle for readily turning out; and we
might, ere this, have witnessed our mail coaches running at the rate
of ten miles an hour, drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen
miles by Blenkinsop's steam-engine! Such would have been a legitimate
motive for overstepping the income of a nation, and the completion of
so great and useful a work would have afforded _rational_ grounds for
public triumph in general jubilees!

Wandsworth having been the once-famed scene of those humorous popular
elections of a mayor, or member for #Garrat#; and the subject serving
to illustrate the manners of the t