too prone, in matters relating rather to the luxuries
than the necessities of our social system, to give undue preference to
the foreigner. British art has, in many branches, been thereby
crippled and discouraged, and a cry, not unnatural surely, has ere now
been raised against the practice. But how incomparably more dangerous
it would be to inundate the country with an alien population, whose
mere brute strength, without a particle of productive skill, is their
only passport and certificate! This too, be it observed, is not for
the purpose of establishing or furthering a branch of industry which
can furnish permanent employment, but merely for carrying out a system
of great change certainly, but of limited endurance. If labour
required to be forced, it would certainly be more for our advantage to
revise our penal institutions, and to consider seriously whether those
who have committed offences against our social laws, might not be more
profitably employed in the great works of the kingdom, than by
transplanting them as at present to the Antipodes at a fearful
expense, the diminution of which appears, in all human probability,
impossible.

If, then, we are right in our premises, the two leading points which
Parliament must steadily regard in forming its decisions connected
with the new schemes, are the sufficiency of unfettered capital and
the adequate supply of labour. Our conviction is, that neither exist
to any thing like the extent which would be required were the present
mania allowed to run its course unchecked. But, on the other hand, a
total stoppage of improvement might be equally dangerous; and it will
therefore be necessary to steer a middle course, and to regulate the
movement according to certain principles. Let us, then, first consider
what lines ought _not_ to be granted.

At the head of these we should place the whole bundle of rival
companies to railways already completed or in progress. We are not of
the number of those who stand up for exclusive commercial monopoly;
but we do think that there is a tacit or implied contract between the
state and the proprietors of the sanctioned lines, which ought to
shield the latter against rash and invidious competition. The older
railways are the parents of the system; without them, it never could
have been discovered what gradients were requisite, what works
indispensable, what savings practicable. The expense of their
construction we know to have been, in many