Life of Robert Stephenson by William Pole: Chapter XIII

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CHAPTER XIII. Railway Progress and Railway Legislation.

RAILWAY organisation, like most important commercial systems, was an affair of small commencement; and to this fact can be traced the principal defects and errors of railway legislation. The early tramways were private works, undertaken at the sole cost, and carried out for the benefit of private traders who for generations bought ‘ way leave ’ of landed proprietors, and occasionally made arrangements of cooperation with the owners of adjacent roads without seeking parliamentary sanction. It was not till the middle of the last century that the legislature was first solicited to authorise the construction of a railroad, and so received a first instalment of that business which, during the last forty years, has swelled to a prodigious bulk. A private act of the 31st Geo. II. (1758) has reference to the road used for coal carriage to Leeds, on which Blenkinsop’s patent locomotives used to run, with toothed driving wheels working on a rack-rail. Clauses are also found in many of the early canal acts, empowering the proprietors of the canals to construct railways in connection with their water ways. The first year of the present century, however, saw the railway instituted in this country as a means of public convenience. In 1801 the Surrey Iron Railway Company was incorporated, with power to construct an iron tramway for public use. A survey of the following table will show the course taken by railway enterprise, until it became one of the greatest and most complicated of existing commercial interests:—

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This table is a concise epitome of the history of railway enterprise during the forty years to which it refers. The first twenty-four years saw exactly the same number of acts passed. In 1825, however, a sudden start was made in consequence of the growing confidence in the Stockton and Darlington line. In the following year, when the success of that undertaking had been ascertained, the number of bills for new lines was ten. The commercial trouble of 1826 reduced the number of bills passed in the following session to one. In 1828, however, a fresh start was made, and steadily maintained till 1836, when the first great railway mania reached its height, and gave the public in the course of the session no less than twenty-nine new bills. In 1837 the first great mania began to subside, just as the works of the London and Birmingham line (to which the mania was in a great measure due) were on the eve of completion, and the passion for railway speculation was for a time so much suppressed, that the years 1838 and 1839 saw only five bills for new lines passed, and the year 1840 did not see even one. The lull, however, was only the precursor of a storm, the fury and ruin of which made the madness and misery of the railway mania of 1836 sink into insignificance. Robert Stephenson’s London and Birmingham line had familiarised the London public with railways, and its success was a constant witness in support of those ambitious speculators who are always eager in exhorting the industrious and thrifty to find for their savings a better investment than the public securities. In 1841 an attempt was made to set the ball rolling once more, and a bill was granted for the construction of the Hertford and Ware branch; but so little was the country as yet in humour to renew the ruinous game of 1836, that even this little branch, five miles and three quarters in length, was not constructed. The session of 1842 saw the advent of George Hudson to London, and bills passed for the Newcastle and Darlington line (about which it will be necessary to speak more fully hereafter) and a few branch lines. The depression still continued. The parliamentary year of 1843 saw little that was new in the way of railway projection. But in the next session the floodgates were opened, and the deluge commenced which in three short years enriched rogues, beggared honest men, swept away the savings of sober industry, and reduced countless families to destitution. In 1844 bills were granted for the construction of forty-eight new hues, extending over 700 miles, at an estimated expenditure of £14,793,994. The allowance for 1845 was 120 new hues, measuring 2,883 miles, at a computed cost of £43,844,907. In the following year (1846) legislative liberality went so far as to authorise the expenditure of £121,500,000, on two hundred and seventy-two new lines, covering four thousand seven hundred and ninety miles. In aU, the amount of the national wealth assigned in these three sessions of Parliament to railway enterprise was one hundred and eighty millions, one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, nine hundred and one pounds.

So long as applications for new hues were few, a parliamentary committee was the best possible tribunal for deciding on the propriety of investing private individuals with power to construct the required lines. Prom 1801 to 1824 inclusive, Parliament (as has been seen) granted only one bill per annum. Whilst the concession of one act a year for the construction of a small road for the convenience of local commerce was enough to satisfy the public demand for railways, there were no grounds for suspecting that assemblies, which had already considered the claims of canal-owners and projectors of public roads and bridges, would be found incompetent to decide with wisdom and equity on cases connected with the creation of public tramways. Now and then the projectors of an iron road between a nest of collieries and a neighbouring port might possibly be defeated in their application to Parliament, through the interest of local members, but such interference would not be likely to be either frequent or of permanent effect; and even in the very few cases where local interests might steadily and triumphantly combine against the public good, the victims of such combination would be so few, and so exceptional, that the nation at large could not be expected to pay them much heed.

It is no purpose of the present work to collect materials out of which the malignant might frame charges of corruption against individuals ; but it is necessary to give a truthful picture of evils which arose only a few years since from circumstances peculiarly unfavourable to disinterestedness and integrity. Until the public awoke to a full sense of the benefits of the railway system, they were slow to discern the injustice and evil consequences of allowing members of the legislature to sit in judgement on cases affecting their private fortunes. Indeed, far from dreading, they found pleasure in calculating, that the decisions of committees would be given in accordance with the selfish instincts of the individuals composing those committees. So universal amongst all classes of society was the antagonism to railways, from an apprehension that they were injurious to vested interests, that gentle and simple viewed with equal complacency the constitution of tribunals which necessarily sympathised in a very high degree with the prevailing prejudice. At first, therefore, as applications to Parliament for public railways increased in number, the public felt that the general interests of property were secured by the conclusions of railway committees composed of the persons through whose estates the projectors wished to carry hues, When it was ascertained that the opposition of members was removed by pecuniary consideration, the moral sense of the country, far from being shocked at the corruption, gave it their sanction. The enormous sums that railway companies had to pay in complying with the required forms of parliamentary application, and the yet more exorbitant sums that had to be expended in buying off (under title of ‘compensation’) the opposition of influential proprietors, appeared to the general public in the light of guarantees that old interests would meet with extreme consideration from the new innovators. The publicity with which demands and proposals and arrangements, having compensation for their object, were made to railway companies, by itself shows how these bargains were regarded by the community at large. An impoverished nobleman, owning a house and park (of the value of £30,000) in a county through which one of the earliest railways was carried, for a small strip of his park, occupied by the railway, which ran quite beyond the sight-range of his windows, obtained no less a sum than £30,000—or the entire value of the estate which the line was supposed only to depreciate. A few years afterwards this same peer sold another corner of the same park for another line for a second £30,000, and when he had thus extracted from two Companies £60,000 as compensation for damage done to his estate, the original property was greatly augmented in value by the lines which, it was represented, would inflict upon it serious injury. Of course it was well understood that two sums of £30,000 did not represent the price of the land, but the price of the peer’s parliamentary interest.

Similar cases were of constant occurrence; and, far from rousing public indignation, they met with public approval. Any amount that could by any means be squeezed from the funds of a railway company under the name of compensation public opinion decided to be legally and honourably acquired. As compensation for ‘severance’ - i.e. for the injury presumed to be done to an estate previously lying within a ring fence—a proprietor (after requiring that bridges should be built at so many points of the line that ‘ the severance ’ would practically cease to exist) would demand two, three, or four thousand pounds, in addition to the extortionate price already paid for the land actually given up to the hne. It was to no purpose that the agents of railway companies demonstrated that this ‘ severance ’ was merely an imaginary grievance, and effected no real injury to the estate. Refusing to see the question in this light, the owner remained steady to his demand, and gained his ‘ severance ’ compensation. Having thus sold a strip of land at four, five, or six times its value, and obtained heavy compensation for the purely imaginary grievance, the owner would then candidly avow that ‘ the severance ’ of his land caused him so little discomfort that he could do with only half or a quarter of the stipulated bridges, and that he would for a further sum free the company from the obligation to build the unnecessary bridges. In the early days of public railways, companies were powerless to resist such extortions. They had to buy in hard cash the goodwill of the community. Frequently the owner who drove the hard bargain was a peer, or a member of the House of Commons, and had interest enough at Westminster to effect a combination that would upset the bill for the proposed line before committee. In other cases he was allied by blood or friendship to county magnates who had such influence; or even where he was only a wealthy yeoman farmer, he often had sufficient local power to rouse the opposition of surrounding owners, who felt they had a common interest to serve in plundering the new railway companies.

The result was that in too many cases a bill was obtained for a new line on grounds altogether distinct from its merits; and in an equal number of cases a line (like that of the London and Birmingham) based on the soundest commercial policy, and demanded by national interests, failed to win parliamentary sanction, because it disturbed the operations and broke into the property of a few private persons. In due course, however, a change was wrought in public opinion. The utility of railways, and the benefits conferred by them upon the entire community, having been demonstrated by experience, the impropriety was seen of permitting railway questions to be decided by persons who were immediately and personally interested in them. It was perceived that a needy member of Parliament, who had been offered £5,000 for a strip of land not worth £500 by the directors of a projected railway, was as little likely to be solely guided to his decision by the actual merits of the proposed line, as any impoverished member of the judicial bench would be likely to hold his ermine spotless if a similar bribe were offered, under circumstances that secured him from exposure. A parliamentary resolution, therefore, excluded from the committee sitting on any proposed line all members who either held land through which the line was to run, or were otherwise commercially interested in the ejection or passing of the bill. This measure of reform did much to check the scandalous traffic of parliamentary influence, which had been previously carried on, without even a pretence of concealment or shame, by members of both houses of legislature. But it by no means put an end to all corrupt practices; and indeed the principal evil at which it was directed had in a very great measure ceased to exist, and given place to another form of legislative abuse.

That the reader may understand this, it is necessary that he should survey the course of railway enterprise from another point of view.

The table and resume given at the commencement of this chapter show that between 1801 and 1846, inclusive, there were three separate periods when speculation in railways made a great start,— each start followed by a corresponding collapse. The first of these periods was in 1825 and 1826 (in a great degree induced by the operations on the Stockton and Darlington line); the second was in 1836 and 1837 (when the first metropolitan locomotive railway was near completion); the third was in 1845 and 1846, when George Hudson, at the height of his success, had for more than three years been leading the country to believe that ‘ management ’ was the only thing required to make any line of railway answer. Business men who can recall from personal experience the events of these three crises sometimes designate them the three periods of railway mania. The first crisis, however, was so slight as compared with the second, and the second was so slight as compared with the third, that some persons speak only of two important paroxysms of railway gambling, whilst with a great majority of Englishmen the almost universal madness of 1845 and 1846 is the railway mania, and the only railway mania worthy of record.

Between the crises of 1825 and 1836, and the mania of 1845, there was as wide a difference in character as in magnitude. At the two former periods the speculators were for the most part obscure adventurers : whilst, in the last outbreak, the gamblers comprised every rank of society, and embraced a greater proportion of the aristocratic and educated classes than of the lower. In 1825 and 1836, railways were still regarded by nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Great Britain as inventions that could never benefit society. Landed proprietors, from the peer to the petty yeoman, and all their dependents, viewed them with either distrust or violent hostility. The great monetary chiefs of the kingdom also opposed them. In London, with the exception of a few such men as Mr. Richardson and Mr. Glynn, there was scarcely a banker or eminent broker who did not rank railway speculation with the South Sea bubble. In Durham Mr. Pease, familiar from boyhood with the railroads of the northern coal-field, advocated the cause of iron roads ; but in Norfolk, where such roads were unknown, a wealthy banker was foremost amongst the opponents of railways. In Liverpool the new road was appreciated; but in the South, at all the principal seats of learning and commerce, it was decried on every consideration of policy. A banker (whose name it would be unfair to mention in connection with this story), residing in one of the Eastern Counties, even went so far as to make a will, leaving in the hands of trustees a considerable property to be expended on parliamentary opposition to railways. It should be added, that the worthy gentleman who made this preposterously absurd disposition of his estate lived to see his folly, and devote his wealth to better purposes.

In 1825 and 1836, the multitudes ready to embark in railway speculation comprised comparatively few monied persons. In the latter period, there was a crowd of projects, and there was a mob of shareholders ; but in a great majority of cases, the schemes and the projectors wanted alike the countenance of tried engineers, and the support of solvent speculators. It was a time very different from the crisis ten years later. Applications were made to parliament for new lines, of which the engineers were charlatans, incapable of taking the level of a grass-plot, the directors were unknown clerks, and the shareholders were little more than beggars. In some instances plans were submitted to Parliament, the engineers and draughtsmen of which knew the country concerned in them only through ordnance maps. Mr. Cundy’s London and Brighton line was one of several similar efforts. If they were not amply attested by evidence recorded in parliamentary blue-books, a reader of the present day could scarcely credit the stories to be told of the mushroom companies of 1836. An attorney without practice, a few bankrupt traders, and as many brokers expelled from the Stock Exchange, would hatch a scheme for a new hne. The attorney (invariably at the bottom of the mischief) undertook the legal business of the association; another of the party, without any regard to his previous education, started as the engineer; a third secured for himself the post of secretary; whilst the rest of the conspirators consented to be nothing more than directors, with handsome fees to be paid out of the first money acquired as ‘ deposit ’ on shares taken by their victims. A prospectus was speedily concocted and a sham survey made. The principal business of the first few months was to find shareholders. To draw dupes it was necessary to have a show of business, and to display a handsome list of subscriptions. This the agents of the company effected by getting signatures from discharged bank-clerks, insolvent schoolmasters, touters of the Stock-Exchange, assistants of sheriff’s officers, hotel-waiters, cab-drivers, keepers of houses of ill fame, and persons unable to keep a house of any kind whatever. Men whose names were entered on lists as shareholders to the amount of thousands, and who were represented as having paid ‘ deposit ’ money to the amount of many hundreds of pounds, acknowledged on examination before parliamentary committees, that at the dates of their respective signatures they had not a sixpence in the world, did not know where to look for a dinner—had not a vocation whereby they could earn an honest subsistence. The mode by which these indigent knaves were induced to sign the subscription lists was not less remarkable than their fraudulent impudence. A gentleman would meet them as they hung about the purlieus of Capel Court, waiting to run errands or discharge commissions for chance employers, and would inform them that there was a petition being signed in a certain house at a certain street, and that every signer of the petition would receive ten shillings and sixpence — not for his signature, but for his trouble in going to the appointed house for the purpose of signing. Induced by such representations these fellows went to the office, wrote their names down on the subscription lists, subscribing for shares as if they were millionaires. As they quitted the office they each received from an unknown agent in a dark passage the price of their labour—-that is to say, their trouble in coming. In examination before committees these men did their best to secure the ‘ agents ’ from detection. The person who paid them was of course quite unknown to them; and the passage in which they were paid was of course so dark that it was utterly impossible for them to distinguish the features of their benefactor, and, equally as a matter of course, they were under the impression that, in signing the subscription, they were acting usefully and honestly. Sometimes these ten-and-sixpenny capitalists were at a loss how to describe themselves, and forgot to put ‘ Gentleman ’ or ‘ Esquire ’ after their names. The secretary, however, easily rectified that slight omission. On other occasions they exhibited hesitation or ingenuity in assigning to themselves reputable residences. One subscriber wrote himself down a resident of a well-known and respectable street, because he had formerly lodged in it; and another capitalist described himself as a householder in a good square, because he often took a walk in the neighbourhood. Such men were good enough to serve the purpose of the unscrupulous agents who paid for their services. The subscription lists were seen to be full of names: the numbers of shares subscribed for, and the amounts of money deposited, were quoted in the organs of railway intelligence. Shares mounted to a premium, and credulous dupes rapped at the doors of the bubble companies, anxious to become ‘bona fide’ purchasers of stock. In the ensuing parliamentary session, the bills of these fictitious associations were thrown out on examination of their merits, or summarily dismissed for non-compliance with standing orders. But in the meantime the deposit money, and sums paid for shares transferred at premium, had passed from ‘the sheep’ into the hands of their fleecers. In more than one case, a company, together with its office, directory, and agents, vanished before the commencement of the parliamentary session; and when its victims made anxious enquiries after their defrauders, they learnt that the directors were the scamps of city cliques, and that ‘the office’ was nothing more than a room hired by the week.

Whilst railway projectors numbered such scoundrels amongst their ranks, and whilst such practices were of frequent occurrence in the transactions of the railway market, the public had some excuse for looking complacently on the selfish policy of members of Parliament. It was argued, not without reason, that the heavy exactions to which bond fide railway companies had to submit before they could carry out their purposes, were at least some guarantee that their promoters were not mere penniless knaves bent on robbing the public. It would have been well, however, if parliamentary corruption had been confined to such extortion as was covered by the word ‘ compensation.’ Unfortunately for the national character, there were members of the legislature who systematically sold their parliamentary interest for money considerations, in the manner of those representatives of the United States who are known to be accessible to ‘lobby influence.’ The time has not yet arrived when it would be right to speak fully on this point. Possibly some future Pepys’ diary will reveal to Englishmen of the twentieth or twenty-first century the names of those British senators of the past generation who gave their votes for gold, and will describe minutely the exact circumstances of particular compacts. For the present, it is enough to state the fact— which is too important, as an indication of social morality, to be altogether passed over without mention. Nor need any member of the existing legislature deem the honour of his order attacked by these remarks, for as far as the materials used for this work throw light upon a disagreeable topic, it can be stated that without exception the men who profited by such shameless corruption have disappeared from public life.

Before quitting this painful part of an important subject, it ought again to be impressed on the reader that railway companies were subjected to extortion alike by all ranks of society. When a railway passed through a provincial town, its directors found the demands of merchants and petty traders quite as exorbitant as those of the landed aristocracy. Mr. Bidder’s experience as engineer of the Blackwall line, under George Stephenson, gives emphatic support to this statement. The Blackwall line was the first railway to pass through a very populous suburb and a crowded quarter of the metropolis; and in completing that important work the directors had daily to submit to demands for compensation, compared with which the exactions of county gentry were liberal arrangements.

By 1845, it was found that railways did not depreciate the property, lower the rents, scare the cattle, or poison the atmosphere of the districts they traversed. It was even seen that, morally and physically, the condition of the humble classes was improved by the means, with which railways presented them, of quitting over-crowded neighbourhoods, and seeking employment where labour was in demand. Instead of dying from frenzy, or catching disease from the waste steam of the locomotives, the live stock of distant counties also derived benefit from the change. Fodder of superior quality and diminished price was conveyed to them by the goods-trains, and breeds were improved by the greater facility with which agriculturists could procure stocks from remote counties; and in addition to the benefits thus conferred on commerce and the working classes, the convenience of the new method of transit was highly appreciated by the wealthy. Gentlemen who, like Mr. Assheton Smith, wished to represent their shires in the House of Commons, and at the same time hunt their fox-hounds two or three days a week, soon learnt to approve a system which brought the best hunting countries within two or three hours’ ride of the capital.

In 1845 the aim of the aristocracy, therefore, was to obtain the greatest possible number of iron-roads, and to have them running close to their front doors. There was no reason to fear that they would not pass good bills. The evil was that, in their anxiety for railroads, they passed bad ones also. Formerly railway projectors—by ‘compensation,’ and other forms of bribery—used to purchase the good-will of a party within the legislature. In 1845 corrupt action went on, but in a different manner. Railway projectors (the corrupting power) were no longer outside the walls of the Houses, but within them. Peers and members of the Lower House were avowedly engaged as traffickers in the railway market, their names being advertised in every quarter as promoters or directors of lines. One consequence of this was the comparative impotency of the rule which forbade members to sit in committees on lines in which they were personally interested. Members attached to the ‘railway interest ’ voted for each other’s projects. A sat in committee and voted for the hne in which his friend B was personally interested; and B in like manner watched with paternal care over the parliamentary career of the hne in which A was personally interested. The results of this system of amicable cooperation were (as has been already seen) a hundred and twenty new bills in 1845, and two hundred and Seventy-two in 1846. Indeed there was in those years scarcely a single person, in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, who was not, personally or through his connections, anxious that a bill should be obtained for some particular new line.

In the crisis of 1836, and also in the crisis of 1845, the parliamentary committee was a tribunal ill-constituted to do justice between railway projectors and the public; but it must be acknowledged that under the circumstances it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to devise a better court of enquiry. Robert Stephenson was always a strong advocate for the creation of a railway board, composed of persons specially qualified by education to preside over railway legislation and administration. But it is open to something more than doubt whether any court that could have been formed to carry out his views would in its practical working have been more efficient, or pure, than the parliamentary system, with all its shortcomings. blunders, and inconsistencies. In an address delivered to the Civil Engineers, on taking possession of the Presidential chair at the Institution in 1856, Robert Stephenson observed;

Little more than a quarter of a century has elapsed since Parliament first began to legislate for railways. In that period a multitude of laws have been placed upon the statute-book which will certainly excite the wonder, if they fail to be the admiration of future generations. The London and North-Western Railway alone is regulated, as is shown by a return of Mr. Hadfield’s, by no less than 168 different Acts' Of these the greater part were passed in the present reign.

But it is not so much the number of the statutes regarding railways that excites surprise. The extraordinary features of the parliamentary legislation and practice consists in the anomalies, incongruities, irreconcilabilities, and absurdities which pervade the entire mass of legislation not only is the legislation irreconcilable, but throughout the quarter of a century during which attention has been given to this branch of legislation, the Acts of Parliament have been wholly at variance with its own principles. To illustrate this: several different select committees have, at various times, deliberately reported against the possibility of maintaining competitions between railways, and to this principle Parliament has as often assented. Yet the practical operation of the laws which have received legislative sanction has been throughout, and at the same time, directly to negative this principle, by almost invariably allowing competition to be obtained, wherever it had been sought. Parliament has therefore been adding to the capital of railway companies, whilst it has been sanctioning measures to subdivide the traffic. The decline of dividends was an inevitable consequence.

Again, in 1836, the House of Commons required its committee upon railway bills specially to report as to the probability of railways paying. This principle has, however, been gradually departed from, until such enquiry is now considered and treated as unimportant. Legislative sanction having been given to a line, it might be supposed that Parliament would also grant adequate protection, exacting from the railway public facilities and advantages in return for the rights afforded to it. Whilst the legislature and the government have exacted facilities and advantages even beyond what they had a fair right to demand, so far from protecting the interests of those to whom they conceded the right, they have allowed—nay, they have encouraged—every description of competition. What has been the result ? As regards the completeness and perfectness of the line first made, obviously it must have been most injurious; as regards the interests of the shareholders, no doubt it has been, in many cases, most disastrous. But how does the case stand as regards the public ? Why, whatever may have been the effect for a time, the competition which Parliament has permitted has invariably been terminated by combination, so that the public have been left precisely where they were.

But the incongruities are by no means the worst features of the parliamentary legislation now under consideration. Mr. Hadfield’s return has been spoken of. That return — in itself exceedingly incomplete, and affording no information of any sort respecting forty-five railway companies, for which Acts have been obtained — shows that the amount expended by existing railway companies in obtaining the Acts of Parliament by which they are empowered has been no less, in parliamentary, legal, and engineering costs, than fourteen millions sterling. No sooner was that fact placed on record, than a universal outcry burst from the alarmists. ‘ See,’ it was said, ‘ how shareholders have been plundered; see how their money has been squandered; look at this vast amount of waste, and consider how much better it would have been in your own pockets ! ’ But in no one case did those who made these bitter comments attribute the monstrous result to the proper cause. Railway directors and officials have been held responsible for what has been the fault, solely and exclusively, of Parliament itself. What interest can directors and officers have in group committees, wherein counsel must be fee’d for attendance during, perhaps, ten or twenty days when they are never heard nor wanted. What interest can directors or officers have in keeping crowds of witnesses in London, at great expense, awaiting the pleasure of a committee, which is engaged upon another measure, and which can rarely foresee or indicate when those witnesses will be required. The ingenuity of man could scarcely devise a system more easy than that of getting a railway bill through the legislature. But who devised that system?—Parliament itself. Who have begged, and prayed, and implored for alteration unavailingly ?— directors and officers of companies. An illustration may show more graphically how Parliament has entailed expense upon railway companies, by the system it has set up. Here is a striking one. The Trent Valley Railway was, under other titles, originally proposed in the year 1836. It was, however, thrown out by the Standing Orders Committee, in consequence of a barn, of the value of about 10?., which was shown upon the general plan, not having been exhibited upon an enlarged sheet. In 1840 the line went again before Parliament. It was proposed by the Grand Junction Railway Company (now part of the North-Western). No less than 450 allegations were made against it before the Standing Orders Committee. The sub-committee was engaged twenty- two days in considering those objections. They ultimately reported that four or five of the allegations were proved; but the Standing Orders Committee, nevertheless, allowed the bill to be proceeded with. Upon the second reading it was supported by Sir Robert Peel, and had a large majority in its favour. It then went into committee. The committee took sixty-three days to consider it, and ultimately Parliament was prorogued before the report could be read. Such were the delays and consequent expenses which the forms of the House occasioned in this case, that it may be doubted if the ultimate cost of constructing the whole line was very much more than the amount expended in obtaining permission from Parliament to make it.

This example will show the delays and difficulties with which Parliament surrounds railway legislation. Another instance will illustrate the tendency of its proceedings to encourage competition. In 1845 a bill for a line now existing went before Parliament with no less than eighteen competitors, each party relying on the wisdom of Parliament to allow their bill at least to pass a second reading ! Judged by such a case, the policy of Parliament would really seem to be to put the public to expense, and to make costs for lawyers, and fees for officers. Is it possible to conceive anything more monstrous than to condemn nineteen different parties to one scene of contentious litigation ? Bear in mind that every additional bill received by Parliament entailed additional expense, not only on the promoters of that one hill, but on all the other eighteen competitors. They each and all had to bear the costs, not of parliamentary proceedings upon one bill, but of the parliamentary proceedings on nineteen bills. They had to pay, not only the costs of promoting their own line, but also the costs of opposing eighteen other lines. And yet, conscious as Government must have been of this fact, Parliament deliberately abandoned the only step it ever took, on any occasion, of subjecting railway projects to investigation by a preliminary tribunal.

After glancing at the facilities afforded by Parliament to landowners for demanding exorbitant compensation, so that ‘ of the £286,000,000 of railway capital expended, it is believed that nearly one-fourth has been paid solely for land and conveyancing,’ Robert Stephenson went on to suggest, as a remedy, ‘ a tribunal competent to judge and willing to devote its attention to railway subjects only.’

‘ What we ask,’ he said, ‘ is knowledge. Give us, we say, a tribunal competent to form a sound opinion. Commit to that tribunal, with any restrictions you think necessary, the whole of the great questions appertaining to our system. Let it protect private interests apart from railways; let it judge of the desirability of all initiatory measures, of all proposals for purchases, amalgamations, and other railway arrangements; delegate to it the power of enforcing such regulations and restrictions as may be thought needful to secure the rights of private persons, or of the public; devolve on it the duty of consolidating, if possible, the railway laws, and of making such amendments therein as the public interests and the property now depending upon the system may require; give it full delegatory authority over us in any way you please. All we ask is, that it shall be a tribunal that is impartial, and that is thoroughly informed ; and if impartiality and intelligence are secured, we do not fear the result.’

It is here seen that the chief charges preferred against parliamentary legislation by Robert Stephenson are those of inconsistency and inordinate cost. Without a doubt the accusations were fully sustained by facts; but the faults complained of would unquestionably have disfigured the operations of any other system.

The evils of parliamentary legislation were evils necessarily consequent on a free system of commercial enterprise and social developement. A paternal government might have mapped out the United Kingdom (as paternal governments did subsequently ! map out some of the continental countries), and have declared what towns and districts should enjoy railway communication—and under what conditions. Such legislative interference would unquestionably have given us railways at a very much lower cost; and millions of money would have remained undisturbed which under existing circumstances changed owners;—but as certainly we should in the long run have been less liberally supplied with roads.

Much of the exorbitant expense of our railway contests must be set down to the fact that Parliament was suddenly inundated with railway business, to discharge which it was unprovided with fit machinery. Business which had previously been an occasional feature of parliamentary enquiry became the chief subject of attention throughout the session. The consequent confusion was not confined to Westminster. Throughout the country there was such a demand for surveyors and draughtsmen, that mere mechanics could earn incomes that seldom reward the ordinary members of the learned professions. The few barristers who had the confidence of the few parliamentary agents who managed the private business of the House of Commons leapt into the enjoyment of fees which, at this date, seem fabulous. Their work was comparatively simple, and required only a slight knowledge of law. At first, they fought on the merits of lines. In the Liverpool and Manchester, the London and Birmingham, the Blackwall, the London and Brighton, and similar contests, counsel, under the guidance of engineers, worked up the estimates, mechanical difficulties, and scientific problems of the undertakings. But with the rapid increase of business they paid less attention to the merits of projects, and procured the triumph or ejection of bills by attention to ‘the forms’ required by committees.

Pages could be filled with anecdotes of great fees paid to favoured advocates for very little work. In the full height of the mania, one of them was found under the shady trees in St. James’s Park, leisurely lounging about and feeding the water-fowl with crumbs of biscuits, before the afternoon had scarcely begun. ‘Why!’ cried the friend, ‘how come you to be here at this time of day!^’— ‘ Oh, my dear fellow,’ was the naive answer, ‘ I am engaged to appear before nine different committees at this very hour; and as it is impossible for me to accomplish that, I thought I would come out here, and enjoy myself. Each of my clients, when he finds I don’t appear in his committee-room, will suppose I am talking away in another. So it will be all right.’

Not less overworked, though by no means so highly paid, were the engineers employed to give evidence before committees. Of those who thus distinguished themselves, several have already gone to another world. Robert Stephenson, Brunel, Locke, and Jacob Samuda are no more; Mr. Bidder and Mr. Vignoles remain. At first, the evidence of the engineer was always given in strict good faith ; and such, to the last, was the case with Robert Stephenson and engineers of the same moral stamp. Other gentlemen, however, with more elastic consciences, regarded their position as identical with that of the advocate, and gave testimony on one side or the other, just as they were paid. The ordinary fee to a scientific witness before committee being ten guineas per diem (whilst waiting to give, as well as whilst giving his evidence), an engineer in great request as a parliamentary witness could frequently during session pick up 100 guineas a-day in the various committee-rooms.

Robert Stephenson resolutely refused to give purely venal testimony, or as a witness to say one word which he did not conscientiously beheve. At the opening of the session of 1845, when the last great mania was advancing to its most violent phrenzy, railway companies even went so far as to send to eminent engineers retaining fees for their services in committee-rooms. One morning Robert Stephenson and Mr. Bidder received, through the post, cheques from various companies, amounting to more than £1,000. No previous overtures had been made by the directorates who forwarded these fees. Similar sums were sent round, in like manner, to other leading engineers. Both Robert Stephenson and his friend lost no time in returning the cheques, with intimations that their evidence was not a power to be bought and sold. To the honour of their profession it may be stated that other engineers acted in the same way.

Prominent amongst scientific witnesses during the memorable railway contests was Dr. Dionysius Lardner, who detected the importance of railway enterprise at its first outset, and zealously interested himself in its developement. His first separate work on the subject was a collection of some ‘ simple rules,’ by which parliamentary committees as well as capitalists might be guided in forming an estimate of a proposed road. Formed on the dawn of railway practice, the opinions of this brochure were unsound. The Doctor had himself the good sense to repudiate his raw theories. But unfortunately the ‘litera scripta’ of his fallacious rules outlived their influence, and day after day was his luckless work quoted against him, to the infinite amusement of the parliamentary bar, and amidst the suppressed titters of practical engineers who were only too well pleased to behold the discomfiture of the man of theory. Mr. Bidder was the mathematical witness usually opposed to the Doctor. As soon as the Doctor was called for examination, Mr. Bidder would rise, and present the counsel, whose duty it was to cross-examine the popular mathematician, with a handsomely bound copy of the ‘ rules.’ Instantly a titter would rise amongst the habitues of the committee-rooms. Dr. Lardner would turn crimson with irritation, and strangers would be at a loss to surmise what was going on beneath the surface. In another minute a barrister, smiling amiably, would begin by asking— ‘ I believe. Dr. Lardner, you are the author of a little work containing a few “simple rules” on railways?’ ‘Yes, sir; you know all about that, sir,’ the Doctor would answer; ‘ you asked me all about that ten times yesterday.’ ‘ Ah, but. Dr. Lardner,’ the tormentor would continue, ‘ that was not before this committee. Indeed, I must beg you to give me a little information about your “ rules.” ’

In judging Parliament for its shortcomings and errors in respect of railways, sight must never be lost of the difficulties under which it acted. And before the censor condemns the system which gave us our iron roads, he would do well to reflect that there is no country which is so well supplied with the new means of locomotion —no country where iron roads are so plentiful, trains so numerous and rapid, and fares so low. The gravest fault committed by our system in its early career was extravagance, which reduced countless humble famihes to enrich a few great persons, or rear colossal fortunes for a few hundreds of attorneys and adventurers. In 1849 ‡‡ the United States had, completed and in use, 6,565 miles of railway. Of this 2,842 miles (the expense of which is accurately known) cost £23,104,909, or about £8,129 per mile. It is assumed that the remaining 3,723 miles were made at the same rate of cost: the expense of 6,565 miles may be computed £53,386,885 ; whereas the 5,000 miles of railway in the United Kingdom cost £200,000,000. The di de fence of these two last sums is so vast that, after making every allowance for the cheapness of land in America, and the presence in the United States of numerous inducements to, as well as facilities for, the construction of railways, no impartial observer can be otherwise than struck with the scandalous prodigality of British expenditure. Still it must be remembered that we were the pioneers in railway developement, being the first to test the merits of the system. Profiting by our experience, other countries avoided our mistakes.

The American States have a greater length of railway than ourselves, both actually and proportionately to their population. But from her extent of territory, America is of course by no means so well supplied with lines as Great Britain. And by every other mode of calculation —by proportion of length of railway to extent of territory, by proportion of railway capital to the population, or by proportion of railway capital to extent of territory — Great Britain is richer in railways than any nation of the world.

It may not, however, be presumed that our railway system is incapable of improvement. An instructive writer (Mr. W. Bridges Adams) has recently exposed its mechanical defects. In respect of management it has also grave deficiencies; and it seems scarcely credible that the present generation wifi pass away without making some attempts for their amendment. The best authorities on ‘railway interests’ (and the term includes the interests of the public as well as of shareholders) are unanimous in avowing the inefficiency of railway management by directorates elected from the shareholders. In the ruinous contests of rival lines, lowering their fares in the hope of reducing each other to bankruptcy, the incompetence of such controlling boards has been signally and frequently displayed. The competition of two railways working- through the same tracts of country has on many occasions given rise to internecine war between their directorates. Increasing in vehemence, the commercial strife has degenerated into personal quarrel, and directors have not hesitated to sacrifice their dividends and embarrass their resources for the mere pleasure of inflicting injury on their antagonists. Such battles, regarded from one point of view, are amusing: but the gloomy reflection they suggest to prudent observers is, that the money squandered by directors is taken from the pockets of shareholders, who regard with dismay the policy to which they are sacrificed. A renewal of these exhibitions of folly would be obviated if companies, instead of working their lines themselves, would let them to farmers, who, like the farmers of turnpike roads and bridges, should pay a certain fixed or variable rent to the shareholders, and retain the surplus receipts.* If such a plan were adopted, a new class of business men would speedily arise, who would see their advantage in providing in the best possible way for the public convenience, and would be chary of engaging in contests, the entire cost of which would fall on themselves. By such a system, shareholders would be secure of their dividends, and the public secure of good accommodation. The only individuals who would suffer by the reform are the gentlemen who at present play with money which is not their own.

Besides this wise measure of amendment, a proposal for a railway bank, undertaking to discharge the functions of bank and also of clearing house to all the Railway companies of the United Kingdom, has of late been a frequent subject of discussion with the most influential personages of the railway market.

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