The
fact respecting them, which is most remarkable, is that of their
being continued into the center of the
Town through the streets.
The cars are not dragged through the city by locomotive engines,
but by horses; the pace therefore is slow, but the convenience to
travelers in being brought nearer to the center of trade must be
much felt. It is as though passengers from Liverpool and
passengers from Bristol were carried on from Euston Square and
Paddington along the New Road, Portland Place, and Regent Street to
Pall Mall, or up the City Road to the Bank. As a general rule,
however, the railways, railway cars, and all about them are ill
managed. They are monopolies, and the public, through the press,
has no restraining power upon them as it has in England. A parcel
sent by express over a distance of forty miles will not be
delivered within twenty-four hours. I once made my plaint on this
subject at the bar or office of a hotel, and was told that no
remonstrance was of avail. "It is a monopoly," the man told me,
"and if we say anything, we are told that if we do not like it we
need not use it." In railway matters and postal matters time and
punctuality are not valued in the States as they are with us, and
the public seem to acknowledge that they must put up with defects -
that they must grin and bear them in America, as the public no
doubt do in Austria, where such affairs are managed by a government
bureau.
In the beginning of this chapter I spoke of the population of New
York, and I cannot end it without remarking that out of that
population more than one-eighth is composed of Germans. It is, I
believe, computed that there are about 120,000 Germans in the city,
and that only two other German cities in the world, Vienna and
Berlin have a larger German population than New York. The Germans
are good citizens and thriving men, and are to be found prospering
all over the Northern and Western parts of the Union. It seems
that they are excellently well adapted to colonization, though they
have in no instance become the dominant people in a colony, or
carried with them their own language or their own laws. The French
have done so in Algeria, in some of the West India islands, and
quite as essentially into Lower Canada, where their language and
laws still prevail. And yet it is, I think, beyond doubt that the
French are not good colonists, as are the Germans.
Of the ultimate destiny of New York as one of the ruling commercial
cities of the world, it is, I think, impossible to doubt. Whether
or no it will ever equal London in population I will not pretend to
say; even should it do so, should its numbers so increase as to
enable it to say that it had done so, the question could not very
well be settled.
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