lighthouses, to fishing harbours, or to agricultural villages. Or again, who can fail to appreciate statesmanlike economy which refuses to recognize the unity of the British Empire by the establishment of a uniform rate of postage when a revenue of no less than £70,000 a year might be jeopardized by the innovation. Take another instance: For forty years past express legislation has made it impossible for private railway companies to contract themselves out of liability for the negligence or misconduct of their own servants. For this interference with freedom of contract public interest was undoubtedly the motive. Yet the Postmaster-General can and does repudiate all legal liability for the deliberate theft or injury by his own servants of property entrusted to him, even in cases where extra fees have been paid as an insurance premium. A union of continental railways led by the commercial companies of Switzerland has recently procured the enactment of international regulations, facilitating the recovery of claims against railway companies. A man whose property is lost on a railway in Holland can settle the matter after his arrival at destination with the railway company in Italy. The State Postal Union, on the other hand, devotes its energy to barring out the claims of individuals altogether. Here is, for example, one regulation. Under no circumstances is the charge for an unrepeated telegram which has been inaccurately transmitted refunded.' In other words, if the sender, after having paid five shillings for the despatch of a certain message, declines to pay a shillings 1 additional to discover whether the message which the Post Office has sent is really the message which he handed in, not only will he have no claim for any damage which may result to him from Post Office carelessness, but actually he may find himself compelled to pay for a service which has never been rendered him at all. Conceive a railway company which loses a man's portmanteau and delivers him instead a sack of damaged potatoes. Not only does it refuse to pay compensation for the loss of the

1 I have written х shillings because, after exhausting perambulations through the mazes of the

1

Post Office Guide, I am quite unable to understand what the additional charge actually is.

portmanteau, but it insists on being paid for the carriage of the valueless potatoes.

But indeed the comparison between railway and Post Office methods is fruitful of results. Imagine a railway company placarding its station with a notice 'The booking clerk is not required to give change or authorized to demand it,' or with another notice requiring passengers personally to paste the labels on their portmanteaus. Or again, what would the public say, if the railway companies issued notices at Christmas and at Easter calling upon them to travel in the early days of the week, in order to make the work as easy as possible for the companies' servants? And yet an extra passenger needs more accommodation than an extra letter. One instance more. When a railway company puts on a new train or opens a new station it makes up its mind to face an almost certain initial loss. The Post Office refuses to open a new telegraph office, however great its indirect advantages to the locality may be, unless the actual cost is guaranteed from the outset. Heads the department wins, tails the guarantors lose.

And yet, for all its penny wisdom, the Post Office can be at times extravagant enough. The rate, for example, for press telegrams-100 words for one shilling-is, we are officially told, a rate which not only does not pay, but never could pay. But the rate continues, for the Press is powerful, and the profits of a handful of millionnaire newspaper proprietors must not be lightly interfered with. On the whole, it is not too much to say that, before anyone can call the management of the Post Office successful, consciously or unconsciously he must have determined that a private enterprise is to be judged by one standard and a Government department by another and a much lower one.

If then we admit State management of railways to be undesirable, we have next to consider what are to be the objects, the extent, and the methods of State control. Now the control of railways falls under two main heads. There is first what may be called the police control of working in the

interest of the public safety, and secondly control from the commercial side of the tariffs and services. The division is for practical purposes a fairly accurate one, though some subjects, as, for instance, new construction and train punctuality, are on the border line. In the early days of railways the police control was much the most important. In those days every town was a centre of demand and supply, and enjoyed, not of right but of necessity, 'the advantage of its geographical situation.' People bought the food grown within a few miles of them. If it did not grow they starved, or, always supposing the roads to be passable, they migrated to another district. The idea, I will not say of New Zealand and Texas, but of Devon and Aberdeen competing in the London Meat Market, had not yet dawned. It was a question not of relative but of absolute tariffs, and railways werealways considering the accommodation they gave-so immeasurably cheaper than any other mode of conveyance that no one grumbled. Nowadays the absolute quantum of a rate is unimportant. It is all a question of relation and proportion. The farmers of Devonshire may find themselves competing at a disadvantage in the London Market, in spite of a reduction of five shillings a ton in the railway rate, because a reduction of ten shillings has been made in the rate from Aberdeen. Naturally, therefore, with an ever-widening area of supply, tariff questions have constantly increased in intricacy and importance.

As far as police control is concerned there would seem to be no special principles affecting railroads, nor is it necessary to discuss the theoretic justification for such control. No one, practically speaking, argues against marine inspection, boiler inspection, building act regulations, notification of infectious diseases, and so forth. The practical justification of any or all of these is of course a matter for discussion on the facts of the individual case; but in theory they all seem comprised within the four corners of the old legal maxim, sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. In more modern phrase the community coerces certain individuals so far as may be necessary to secure that the freedom of all

other members of the community shall be at the maximum. So far as our present subject is concerned, it would seem to be absolutely a matter of detail whether certain injuries, to which railway passengers are liable, and from which they are not strong enough individually to protect themselves, shall be dealt with by the co-operative machinery of the State, or by the machinery of a voluntary co-operative Railway Passengers' Protection Association. As for the kind of interference which has been shown by experience to produce the best results, there will be a word or two to be said later on.

Meanwhile let us notice some individual points in which State interference is obviously justifiable. First and foremost comes the construction of new lines. A railway cannot be made unless it has the power compulsorily to take the land required for the purpose. The only justification for the concession of this power is the public interest, and in this the existence of a tribunal to decide whether the public interest is really involved is at once implied. Carrying this a stage further, we may say that a railway can only be useful to those whom it accommodates. A line, for example, made without intermediate stations to serve the express traffic between London and Brighton, is evidently no convenience to the districts it passes through. Control therefore of the construction of the line implies control of the arrangements for dealing with traffic along it. On this point it may well be thought that the State-represented in this case by Parliamentary committees has with us hitherto interfered too little. Running one's mind, for instance, down the line of a single company, the Great Western, it is evident that the public interest would have been better served had public authority prevented the construction of a second independent station, and insisted on the new company's admission to the old station at Reading, Oxford, and Swindon respectively. These, of course, are only given as examples. Any one who takes an interest in such questions could no doubt supply from his own local knowledge scores of instances in which slight modifications of promoters' plans would have resulted in greatly increased convenience to the

public. Of course there is a per contra in all such matters. One man may lead a horse to the water, but nine men may not be able to make him drink; and so a public department may lay obligations on a body of promoters, with the result possibly of stopping the construction of the line altogether, or at least, in less extreme instances, of discouraging the promotion of similar schemes. No doubt there is need for a large allowance of common sense and elasticity at the back of such interference; still, given the possibility of finding such qualities in a government department, I am constrained to think that State interference with the construction of new lines might with advantage be carried somewhat further than it has been hitherto.

Again, the State may naturally be expected, before permitting owners and occupiers to be compulsorily dispossessed of their lands, to satisfy itself that the new company will really carry out the undertaking which it projects. Obviously, half-finished embankments and semi-pierced tunnels can afford no convenience to the public at large; they may, however, as was found in practice after the mania of 1847, remain as a standing nuisance to landowners, and an eyesore to every passer-by for many years to come. It is, therefore, only right and proper that security should be taken that the promoters are persons who may be expected really to complete and open the line for which powers are given; and further to be able to work it when opened in a reasonably efficient manner. Parliamentary committees and the authorities of the two Houses have in practice striven for half a century past to attain this end, but the scant measure of success to which they have attained is one more proof of the inherent difficulties of railway control. For in fact the Parliamentary control has protected neither the landowner on the one hand, nor the promoter on the other. Hundreds upon hundreds of Bills have been passed whose powers have subsequently lapsed, either wholly or partially unexercised, for want of funds, while a hundred millions sterling is a moderate estimate of the money that has gone in railway construction without yielding any dividend whatever. Indeed it may be questioned