5. "That they are perfectly safe for passengers.
6. "That they are not (or need not be), if properly constructed, nuisances to the public.
7. "That they will become a speedier and cheaper mode of conveyance than carriages drawn by horses.
8. "That, as they admit of greater breadth of tire than other carriages, and as the roads are not acted on so injuriously as by the feet of horses in common draught, such carriages will cause less wear of roads than coaches drawn by horses."
The proceedings which rendered necessary the investigation instituted by the Parliamentary Committee, and which justified that committee in reporting "that they had ascertained that a determination existed to obstruct as much as possible the progress of an invention," which they declared to be "one of the most important improvements in internal communication ever introduced," will, doubtless, excite unqualified indignation. That the half-civilised population of Ireland, after ages of misgovernment and oppression, should view with distrust the factories of English settlers, and shrink from a participation in benefits, the nature and extent of which they cannot appreciate, excites no surprise: if they obstruct or occasionally destroy these means of their own civilisation, their defence is found in the irresponsibility inferred by exclusion from instruction. That improvements in machinery, by which labour is superseded, sometimes excite to violence the lower classes of hand artisans, is a matter of just condemnation; but in this case also guilt has its palliation, in the difficulty which uneducated persons find in perceiving that the displacement of labour by machinery is only apparent, or at least temporary, and that the final and never-failing result is an increased demand for hands. The momentary distress which every great change in employment necessarily occasions in a
