The Train, the Church, and Caleb Garth.

"Well, there's this to be said, Jane,' Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering his voice in a cautious manner --'the more spokes we put in their wheel, the more they'll pay us to let them go on, if they must come, whether or not" (520).

This exchange, particularly the "if they must come" part, for me highlights the nature of the discomfort all of the Middlemarchians feel at one point or another in the text-- the inevitability of having to make decisions about what is important in this new era of the scientific, industrial middle class. This “anxiety about change” idea has been played out in Lydgate’s modernization of the medical institutions of Middlemarch and the town’s resistance and subsequent punishment of Lydgate’s business. But what I think this quote suggests, because of who says it and who is at work behind it, a turning point in the town’s consciousness. 
 The old system is represented in this quote by the old church that Caleb Garth is proposing to build a train track through, literally welcoming opportunity down the tracks. Caleb Garth, a town native, a universally trusted face and a worker is suggesting that the town will gain more than it will lose in the destruction of this parochial figure of simpler times. He is whistling the tune of both collective and self interest and for the first time, some other relevant native body, Mr. Solomon, appears to be listening.