and the farm, open up markets for field produce, and provide
outlets for manufactures. They enable the natural resources of a
country to be developed, facilitate travelling and intercourse,
break down local jealousies, and in all ways tend to bind together
society and bring out fully that healthy spirit of industry which
is the life and soul of every nation.

The road is so necessary an instrument of social wellbeing,
that in every new colony it is one of the first things thought of.
First roads, then commerce, institutions, schools, churches,
and newspapers. The new country, as well as the old, can only be
effectually "opened up," as the common phrase is, by roads
and until these are made, it is virtually closed.

Freedom itself cannot exist without free communication,--every
limitation of movement on the part of the members of society
amounting to a positive abridgment of their personal liberty.
Hence roads, canals, and railways, by providing the greatest
possible facilities for locomotion and information, are essential
for the freedom of all classes, of the poorest as well as the
richest.

By bringing the ends of a kingdom together, they reduce the
inequalities of fortune and station, and, by equalizing the price
of commodities, to that extent they render them accessible to all.
Without their assistance, the concentrated populations of our large
towns could neither be clothed nor fed; but by their instrumentality
an immense range of country is brought as it were to their very doors,
and the sustenance and employment of large masses of people become
comparatively easy.