nd
Templemore--all considerable towns--lie a few miles from the Railroad,
on the right or west, as Naas, Cashel and Tipperary are not far from it
on the left; while another Railroad, the "Irish South-Eastern," diverges
at Kildare to Carlow, Bagnalstown and Kilkenny (146 miles from Dublin)
on the South; while from Kilkenny the "Kilkenny and Waterford" has
already been constructed to Thomastown (some 20 miles), and is to reach
Waterford, at the head of ship navigation on the common estuary at the
mouth of the Suir and Barrow, when completed.

I left the Great Southern and Western at Limerick Junction, 107 miles S.
S. W. of Dublin, and took the crossroad from Tipperary to Limerick (30
miles), but the main road proceeds south-westerly to Charleville, 22 1/2
miles further, and thence leads due south to Mallow, on the Blackwater,
and then south by east to Cork, 164 1/2 miles from Dublin, while another
railroad has just been opened from Cork to Bandon, 18 3/4 miles still
further south-west, making a completed line from Dublin to Bandon, 183 1/2
miles, with branches to Limerick, Tipperary and Kilkenny, the latter to
be continued to Waterford. In a country so easily traversed by
Railroads, and so swarming with population as Ireland, these roads
should be not only most useful but most productive to their
stockholders, but they are very far from it. Few of the peasantry can
afford to travel by them, except when leaving the country for ever, and
their scanty patches of ground produce little surplus food for
exportation, while they can afford to buy little that the Railroads
bring in. Were the population of Ireland as well fed and as enterprising
as that of New-England, with an industry as well diversified, her
Railroads would pay ten per cent, on their cost; as things now are, they
do not pay two per cent. Thus the rapacity of Capital defeats itself,
and actually impoverishes its owners when it deprives Labor of a fair
reward. If all the property-holders of Ireland would to-day combine in a
firm resolve to pay at least half a dollar per day for men's labor, and
to employ all that should present themselves, introducing new arts and
manufactures and improving their estates in order to furnish such
employment, they would not only speedily banish destitution and
ignorance from the land but they would double the value of their own
possessions. This is one of the truths which sloth, rapacity and
extravagance are slow to learn, yet which