of exchange. A spot uncommunicated with may be
visited by the honors of famine, and no channel exist for conveying
thither the food required. A grievous pestilence may sweep off an
isolated people before the aid of the physician can arrive to arrest
its progress.

Such facts are obvious to even the most indifferent observers of human
society. Yet, nevertheless, there have been, and are, short-sighted
individuals, in every gradation of it, with minds and views so warped
and distorted by an ignorant selfishness, that they have opposed
every improvement which tended to make the least change in their
long-established habits. Such persons were they, who, during the last
century, promoted petitions from counties in the neighbourhood of
London, praying Parliament not to extend the turnpike-roads into remoter
parts of the country, lest these remote districts, by means of a less
expensive labour, should be able to sell their agricultural products
in the London markets at a cheaper rate than themselves!--and such in
our own day are the attempts made to put down steam conveyance. How
short-sighted we are! Did we consult our own advantage we should see
that those facilities of communication, against which we oppose
ourselves, are the growing sinews of a greater fabric of wealth and
prosperity.

Such are the numerous and important advantages, in a commercial point of
view, which will result to society from the substitution of elementary
for physical power. But even these, great though they be, are of
trifling consideration when compared with the immense benefits which
will result from the substitution when brought into operation as an
economic principle.

_Substitution of Steam for Horse Power_.

[Mr. Gordon then refers to the conclusion of political economists "that
the grand source of all our evils is _redundancy_ of population; or in
other words, an increase of animated life _beyond_ the nourishment
adequate to support it."]

The substitution of inanimate for animate power, if not the panacea which
is to cure all the evils of our condition, is at least one that comes
recommended as a matter of fact--easy of operation, and effectual in its
result. If want of food, or, in other words, redundancy of population
be the bane of the country, it does not propose to meet that evil by a
visionary project, tending in its operation to unhinge society--tedious in
its process, and ending at length in bitter disappointment--but it meets