424 COLONIAL AND TRANSATLANTIC inhabitants is advanced, by affording them more plentiful resources, and the political value of such countries equally augmented by increasing gene¬ ral industry and commerce. For, when the means of receiving intelligence from, and visiting, distant countries, are rendered certain and speedy, mutual transactions and adventurous undertakings are enter¬ ed into with much greater faith and spirit, than when the intercourse depends on the uncertain length of voyages subject to the direction of winds and cur¬ rents, and to the duration or frequency of calms. These considerations apply most forcibly to the amazingly vast advantages that would inevitably attend the establishment of a line of Transatlantic steam-packets,—not only as respects his Majesty 's empire in , but also as regards the United Kingdom, and particularly as bearing on the great movements of emigration. If we are safe in forming conclusions according to the experience of the last fifteen years, we are also safe in saying, that steam is the power which will supplant all others in the magnitude and rapidity of its operations. Although we may not be quite so sanguine as Mr M 'Taggart about making a voyage by steam from Birmingham, Manchester, and Liver¬ pool, (with a cargo of cutlery, printed cottons, and crockery,) across the , and then up the rivers and lakes of the Lawrence, and over the to the Pacific and China—an undertaking far from being impossible—yet steam is the mighty giant that Great Britain can send forth to bring her