The Press.
London, England, 1853-08-13 00:00:00

7;l'

338

in Lord ST. GERMANS' estimation, is fit to
to be an Education Commissioner. If Lord
ST. GERMANS had sent Mr. HATCHELL as a
pupil to the Board, we would have commended
such a good-natured act. But to place him as
a Commissioner in the room of Mr. BLACKHCRNE
is carrying the love of a piece of fun even too
far for the latitude of Ireland. What acade-
mical attainments, what high • professional
standing, can Mr. HATCHELL boast of that he
should be thought worthy of occupying—we
will not say filling—the vacated seat of Mr.
BLAeRsuRNE ? We have heard of an English
Attorney-General who was called, in military
parlance, " a Protestant unattached," and, with
a simil .r fa:on de parler, we may talk of Mr.
HATCHELL as an Attorney General cashiered. It
is certain that he was in London on the forma-
tion• of the present Cabinet, and it is equally
certain that the Coalition preferred to take up
Mr. BREWSTER, or even Mr. KEOGH, in prefer.
ence to Mr. HATCHELL; and yet this is the man
(-howl at a critical period to give weight, and
dignity, and moral power to the " Board of
Education." We could almost wish that the
viceregal presentments to office should be sub-
ject to grand-jury processes, in order that the
HATCHELL presentment miFlit be endorsed
with the specially appropriate word, " Igno-
raMl.lB." The notion of Mr. llATcitEm. pre-
siding over education is almost as ludicrous as
that of the member for Kidderminster editing
" Lord Chesterfield," or Sir W. MOLESWORTH
eomposing sermons on the duties of lay
patrons.

. .. THE RAILROAD BUNGLE.
HAs it ever occurred to any of our readers
(nut an actual holder of railroad shares) to
take up the morning's Times, and, running his
eye down the long enumeration of some
seventy or eighty British railroads, and ten or
twelve French, to ask himself the question,
how it comes about that all the latter (with but
one petty exception) are at a hiyh premium ;
whilst every railroad in Great Britain and Ire-
land (except five or six) is at a dixeount, vary
ing from five per cent. to seventy ?
This is a startling fact, but it is one tho
truth of which may be verified iu a moment.
Look only at the following list of the twelve
leading railroads of France, every one of
which has proved a prize to its fortunate
shareholders. There is one exception, the
little line from Strasbourg to Basle, which is
at a discount of thirty per cent. on the paid
up cost ;
Linos. Premium. per Cent.
Northern of Franco
Paris and Lyons
Paris and Strasbourg
Paris and Orleans
Paris and Rouen
Paris and St. Germain
Paris, Cacu, and Cherbourg
Southern of France

*einem of France
Rouen and Havre
Lyme and Mediterranean

The uniformity of this illustration of suc-
c•essful enterprise is not less striking than its
magnitude. All these are twenty-pound shares.
and yet they are selling at a profit varying
from twenty:/ire to two hundred and twenty per
rent.

And now turn 10 the gloomy memorial of
British disappointment, and contrast the two
results. Six lines alone out of the whole list
are at a premium, viz.:—
_ . .

Lines. Premium. per Cent.
Bristol and Exoter
Dublin and Belfast 3 .... 6

G. South. and West. of Ireland 12 .... 12
London and Brighton
London and North-Western
Lancaster awl Carlisle 45 .... 45

AU the rest ure losing colleen's, at a rate
varying from a discount, of two pounds to
serenty-eiyht. Looking to th© latest quotations,
the following are the prices at which the most
important of the British railroads can be
purchased iu the market at the present mo-
ment

THE PRESS.

Lines. Discount. per c cut.
Caledonian
Chester and Holyhead
Eastern Counties
Edinburgh and Glasgow
Great Northern 23 .... 23
Great Western
Lancashire and Yorkshire
London and South• Western
Midland
Norfolk
North Staffordshire
Scottish Ci•ntral
Ditto Midland
South Eastern . 2B .... 28
York and North Midland 39 .... 39

Others less important show a still more
ruinous loss to the original proprietors, such
as the Aberdeen, which is at a discount of 73 ;
the East Anglian of 78 ; the Edinburgh.
Perth, and Dundee of 70; the Leeds Northern
of 68 ; the North British of 66 ; and others
varying from 50 to 25.
In reply to the question how this singular
result has been brought about, we answer
unhesitatingly, by carrying the non-interference
principle to a ruinous extreme.
Sir ROBERT PEEL with a fatal ardour advo-
cated the policy of leaving private enterprise
to its own unaided and all but uncontrolled
volition,—the revolutionising the entire sys-
tem of internal communication throughout
the British dominions. The effects of this
laissez faire policy are thus before us :—the
kingdom cut up into incongruous sections, and
traversed by exceptional highways, with occa-
sionally incompatible gauges ;—and all this
scramble for speculation, which was to have
enriched and adorned the empire, has ended,
us we see above, in indiscriminate disappoint-
ment and almost universal loss.
In triumphant contrast to the example of
Great Britain, the Government of France, and
those of the Continent generally, perceived with
a clearer foresight that the construction of a
.novel system of communication between every
extremity of a kingdom was a subject, not for
individual caprice, but for a national solicitude
and imperial supervision. Hence the triumph
of their railroad system, in the symmetry of
its projection, the economy of its construction,
and the appreciable value of its different sec-
tions as a private investment.
Tardily and timidly our rulers have dis-
covered their own error, and applied a stealthy
remedy. Government interference was at-
tempted—first, by the Board-of-Trade control,
and, subsequently, by the cautious admission in
the colonies and in Ireland of official guaran-
tees, to ensure a limited return upon individual
investment. . .

At length, at the close of a protracted in-
quiry,
the President of the Board of Trade is
now about to submit to the Legislature a
scheme for confiding to the authorities an
efficacious and controlling voice in the pro-
jection, the construction, and the management
of the leading lines of communication to be
hereafter undertaken. There is to be, hence
forth, an umpire who is to appease the sullen
war which now goes on universally between
the public and the army of railroad officials.
After squandering 70,000,0001. in iniquitous
contests in Parliament for the triumph of rival
projects—after abandoning lines sanctioned, to
the extent of 40,000.0001., but which proved too
absurd to be ever made—a committee of Par
liament is at last to be empowered to consult
the interests of the public and the country, as
well as those of their shareholders in the lines
they undertake, and to enforce the regularity
and responsibility which were the consideration
and the condition of the powers entrusted to
them by the Legislature.
The plan now submitted to Parliament falls
far short of the hold and comprehensive policy
of other countries in grappling with this
momentous question. But even as a compro-
mise and instalment it will effect the impor
tant object of discouraging, in limine, those un
wise contests which have absorbed so many
millions ; it will stifle in their birth the un
sound projects which have only been sanc-
tioned by the House of Commons to be
abandoned by their own projectors : and,
above all, it deters. under the threat of pains
and penalties. the dishonest opposition by
which lines of imperial value have been here-
tofore so harassed in their initiatory stage
through Parliament, as to be encumbered in

SATURDAY,

all their after administration by the fearful
expenditure for costs, charges, compensation,
and hush-money, which was indispensably
squandered, in order to purchase for them a
l'scus standi in Parliament, and an existence as
a legalised adventure.