The Express.
London, England, 1866-02-17 00:00:00

THE EIP

houses in which they can afford to live
these poor people followed busineesse
tione commonly regarded as beneath the tiatiCiNf
the law of compensation, but which, being
their livelihood, were everything to them.
When the neighbourhnod in which they had
gradually built up a connexion was dispersed
their living was destroyed. The advent of a
railroad company among such a population is
a calamity as great as the cattle plague to
grazing farmers, yet nobody asks compensation for
them, nor is the House of Commons kept sitting
till midnight to decide whether they should be in-
demnified at the r►te of one-half or two-thirds the
value of the interest destroyed. No doubt there
would be great diffioulty in assessing exactly the loss
which these poor people sustain, but at present no
estimate whatever is attempted. As we all know,
every metropolitan extension of a railway is not •
source of profit to the shareholders. Still lines of
this character are made in the confident expecta-
tion of private profit, and Parliament in sanctioning
them acknowledgesthattheiroonstructionisfor pub-
lic advantage. In these facts two sources are indi-
cated from which the means of an indemnity for
the sufferers by railway invasion may be derived.
The worst evil of the wholesale destruction of human
habitations is that the dispossessed people are
swept into cellars and hovels without the common
decencies of civilized life, and suffer there in their
pockets, their health, and their morals. The
world, as we all know, must go on, but
let our progress be accompanied with fair
play. If, as one of our eminent country-
men testifies, we cannot be happy without •
railway to orry us from a dismal life at Islington
to a dismal life at Camberwell every quarter of
an hoar, let us have the satisfaction of knowing
on the journey that we are not rolling over dwel'-
ings which we have made the living tombs of our
eonntirmen. Something remedial may be dose by
encourniog the multiplication of labourers' dwell-
; cgs such as Alderman WA.TIRLOW has shown us how
to build. And it is satisfactory to learn that Mr.
CHILDERS has a bill in Parliament that sill fac"i-
tate this object by means of loans at low interest
granted by the Government on security, and that
Mr. TO/LIMNS has another of a more comprehen-
sive and thorough-going character. It is
probable, however, that in future the House
of Commons will require from railway
companies proposing to carry lines through
thickly populated metropolitan districts some
specific provision for the conveyance of the people
dis'odged ; and the prospect of having their schemes
rejected on account of the absence of such an
arrangement should lead the directors of companies
to consider what may be done to remove the
objection. The existence of societies like the
' Industrial Dwellings Company alleviates the die-
cul4 by reducing it to a question of funds. The
territorial encroachments of our railway companies
are felt by other classes besides the poor, and, as
Mr. Humors has truly observed, their social
tyranny is not relieved by those mitigations which
reconcile us to older forms of oppression, least of
sll by its picturesqueness. Another turn of the
screw might unite all classes in an indignant effort
in favour of what the French designate by the ugly
name of reteadication.

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