be suspected that the
recommendation of the commissioners had been biassed by any political
consideration? Was it a Whig commission attempting to fulfil a Whig
object? Another commission, more memorable, at the head of which was the
Earl of Devon, was appointed by a Tory government some years afterwards,
virtually to consider the condition of the people of Ireland, and the
best means for their amelioration. The report of the Devon commission
confirmed all the recommendations of the railway commissioners of '36,
and pointed to these new methods of communication, by the assistance of
loans from the government, as the best means of providing employment for
the people.

When Mr. Smith of Deanston was examined by a Parliamentary committee,
and asked what measure of all others would be the one most calculated to
improve the agriculture and condition of Ireland, he did not reply, as
some might have anticipated, that the most efficient measure would be
to drain the bogs; but his answer was, 'advance the construction of
railways, and then agricultural improvement will speedily follow.'

To illustrate the value of railways to an agricultural population, Mr.
Smith, of Deanston, said, 'that the improvement of the land for one mile
only on each side of the railway so constructed would be so great, that
it would pay the cost of the whole construction.' He added, that there
were few districts' in Ireland, in which railway communication could
be introduced, where the value of the country through which the railway
passed would not be raised to an extent equal to the whole cost of the
railway.

Arguing on an area of six hundred and forty acres for every square mile,
after deducting the land occupied by fences, roads, and buildings, Mr.
Smith, of Deanston, entered into a calculation of the gain deliverable
from the mere carriage of the produce of the land, and the back carriage
of manure, coals, tiles, bricks, and other materials, and estimated the
saving through those means on every square mile to more than L300, or
something above L600 on 1,280 acres abutting each mile of railway,
this being the difference of the cost of carriage under the old mode of
conveyance as compared with the new. Following up this calculation,
he showed that fifteen hundred miles of railway would improve the land
through which it passed to the extent of nearly two million acres at the
rate of a mile on each side; and, taken at twenty-five years' purchase,
wo