The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-29 00:00:00

APRIL 29, 1854.

direct any other proceeding to be taken." These are
really the words of the bill :—" And the company so served
shall thereupon be liable to be dealt with by the court as a
party to such suit." Surely the lawyers may adopt the lan-
guage of the owls in the Eastern apologue, and exclaitn,
" Long live Mr. Cardwell ! while he reigns we shall never
want Chancery suits!" What shareholders may exclaim,
if breath is left to them for ejaculation, is another matter.

The 13th clause is by no means the least objectionable
of the bill—it enables any railway company, without the
consent of its opponent, to refer to the Board of Trade
any action or suit in which it is involved, and so substitutes
that board, absolutely and without appeal, for the legal tri-
bunals of the country.
Lastly comes the 14th clause, which, if it means any-
thing—and grammatically it is nonsense—enables the
court to fix an unlimited daily penalty for any default by
the company in obedience to the order of the court.

Nor is it merely the malice of private
opponents that may be gratified under this
bill. One department at least of Government,
the Post-office, is brought into frequent and
not very friendly collision with railway jute
rests. Suppose that it goes to law, and ob-
tains a judgment under the act of 1635,

From that moment, at the instance of the Post-office,
the Board of Trade under the clauses, the Court of Chancery
under the bill, has absolute authority over the Lancashire
and Yorkshire Railway ; may regulate its traffic, may ad-
just its tolls ; and that, not according to any known law,
but as either the one or the other thinks just and reason-
able.
•- • •
- -

Thus Government ingeniously provides the
machinery of which it may hereafter take
advantage to obtain the uncontrolled manage-
ment of all railway property whatever. This
is no exaggeration ; for there does not exist a
company which may not, through some one
of its innumerable agents, commit a single
blunder punishable by law, and one such in-
stance is sufficient to deprive it of the future
conduct of its own affairs.

- -
And who are the persons on whom is de-
volved this vast and most responsible duty ?
The President of the Board of Trade, KR all
the public knows, has nothing to do with it.
At best a subordinate officer—not very highly
paid—quite unknown to the world in general—
personally irresponsible, except to the head of
his department—is to be invested with auto-
cratic authority over such concerns as, it may
be, the Great Western or the North Western.
And this is reform!
Mr. Coates does not deny the eccasional
errors of railway companies, though he thinks
them exaggerated, and certain to yield to the
pressure of public opinion ; but he contends
that neither the Board of Trade, nor the
Court of Chancery, nor both together, are
competent for the work which Mr. Cardwell
desires them to undertake. He argues, more-
over, that the companies have suffered giicv-
ously in their transactions with the State :
Surely a review of the treatment of railway companies
by the State is a sad retrospect. Compelled to acquire
their original powers at an outlay so costly as to be almost
incredible, and to incur an outlay scarcely less large when•
soever they apply to Parliament for fresh powers ; driven
to purchase their land at a price which it would be mild to
call excessive, although they were opening in their course
new sources of wealth for every district which they traversed:
subject to a taxation which no reasoning cen justify, and
which has been acknowledged by successive Governments
as a grievance from which they ought to be relieved ;
harassed by perpetual threats of changes in the law with a
view to coerce them ; hearing it as an admitted dogma that
every improvement in their undertaking which they seek
from Parliament leave to make may be a ground for
abolishing their dearly-bought rights and altering all h
ten
their
relations , never receiving those " equivalents ic
years ago were promised to them for concessions which
they then made ; now told that competition must be the
condition of their subsistence, then denounced because they
resort to those means which the contest they would fain
have avoided renders in their eyes justifiable if not requisite ;
that they should still maintain their vigour and serve the
public With the success they have attained would have
been hopeless in any other country than this.
The pamphlet is valuable as a summary,
and worth reading.

Nanette and her Lorers. By Talbot Gwynne.
London : Smith, Elder, and Co.
THE class of fiction to which this book be-
longs is extending. It is found that there is
a sale for prettily-written stories in o
dnee
volume, apart from the circulating-library -
mand, and thus far publishers have been suc-
cessful in catering for the public
nd tasteol. Such
are
tales as this, and as " Cherry a Viet,"
not of a very high caste, but they are simplel
,
entertaining, constructed according to
rules of art, and their historical colouring is