In a great commercial country like ours, extending its ramifications to
every branch of natural and artificial produce, it is almost superfluous
to remark that a vast capital is sunk annually in the mere transport of
marketable commodities: and which is not only a loss to the seller as
being an unproductive outlay, but entails a heavy increase of expense
to the buyer also upon every article of daily consumption. Any means,
therefore, that will accelerate the conveyance, and at the same time
reduce materially the expense of carriage, bears upon its surface a
great public gain.

Expeditious locomotion, to the commercial world more particularly, in
every mercantile transaction, is equivalent to capital: and such is the
vast importance of economy of time here, that no extra expense is
considered as too great to accomplish the utmost speed. We have this
practically illustrated in the preference which society gives to a
complicated machinery put into motion at an enormous expense, to
travelling by the winds of heaven which cost nothing.

To the merchant time gained is equal to money: for time occupied in
travelling is just so much profitable employment lost. Time occupied
in the transport of goods is equivalent to so much interest of capital
spent: for a thousand pounds invested in merchandise is unproductive so
many days as the transport is tedious. That part of the capital of an
individual which is employed in the carrying of his goods to and from
market, is so much abstracted from his means of producing more of the
article in which he exerts his ingenuity and labour, whether it be in
agriculture or manufacture.

Easy communication lessens the time occupied in the transport; and a