Russian locomotives: you
travel without losing twenty minutes anywhere, and the two hundred
francs which you paid in Madrid will be divided to a nicety among the
companies which have combined to forward you to your destination. This
line from Madrid to St. Petersburg has been constructed in small
isolated branches which have been gradually connected, and direct trains
are the result of an understanding which has been arrived at between
twenty different companies. Of course there has been considerable
friction at the outset, and at times some companies, influenced by an
unenlightened egotism have been unwilling to come to terms with the
others; but, I ask, was it better to put up with this occasional
friction, or to wait until some Bismarck, Napoleon, or Zengis Khan
should have conquered Europe, traced the lines with a pair of compasses,
and regulated the despatch of the trains? If the latter course had been
adopted, we should still be in the days of stage-coaches.

The network of railways is the work of the human mind proceeding from
the simple to the complex by the spontaneous efforts of the parties
interested, and it is thus that all the great enterprises of our age
have been undertaken. It is quite true, indeed, that we pay too much to
the managers of these enterprises; this is an additional reason for
suppressing their incomes, but not for confiding the management of
European railways to a central European government.

What thousands of examples one could cite in support of his same idea!
Take all great enterprises such as the Suez Canal, the lines of Atlantic
steamers, the telegraph which connects us with North and South America.
Consider also that commercial organisation which enables you on rising
in the morning to find bread at the baker's--that is, if you have the
money to pay for it, which is not always the case now-a-days--meat at
the butcher's, and all other things that you want at other shops. Is
this the work of the State? It is true that we pay abominably dearly for
middlemen; this is, however, an additional reason for suppressing them,
but not for believing that we must entrust government with the care of
providing for our feeding and clothing. If we closely scan the
development of the human mind in our times we are struck by the number
of associations which spring up to meet the varied requirement of the
individual of our age--societies for study, for commerce, for pleasure
and recreation; some of the