The Express.
London, England, 1868-01-30 00:00:00

OUB CONTEMPORARIES.

(THIS DAY.)

RAILWAY AFFAIRY.
The nacs explains the effect of an important
judgment delivered by Lord Cairns in the matter of the
Clandsrian Railway Company on Tuesday last. The com-
pany in question sought to avail themselves of the Rail-
way Companies Act of 18417. Their leading idea was to
provide for all creditor' by giving them deferred rent-
charges and passive debenture stock, and they applied to
the court to restrain all suits and actions against the com-
pany. The Vice-Chancellor, Sir William Page Wood,
beton whom the application first came, arrived at the
conclusion that it was intended ordinary creditors
should be bound by a scheme even without assent,
because of the practical difficulty of obtaining
their assent, but he thought that unpaid land-
owners were not bound by any such scheme at all.
An appeal to a higher tribunal was made and hence the
judgment of Lord Cairns. When the directors of an un-
limited company file a scheme of arrangement the Court
of Chancery may, upon fit terms, restrain all erred
creditors
whatever from proceedin4, and this for the purpose of ob-
taining the consent of the creditors who are modified
owners, such as mortgagees, debenture holders, preference
ihsreholders, sad rent holders, to such arrangements, cur-
tailing their own claims or otherwise, as shall provide for
the payment of outside creditors. It follows that it is only
' when a scheme has this end in view, and gives promise
of realising it, the Court of Chancery will ex-
ecs:foe its power of temporarily restraining outside
creditors from pursuing their accustomed remedies.
In the instance before Lord Cairns the Cambrian directors,
so far from proposing a scheme to provide for the payment
of their unpaid landowner creditors, desired to defer their
claims. Lord Cairns refused to suspend the remedies of
the landowners, however temporarily, in order that such
a plan should be matured. His judgment, adds the Times,
has brought order out of confu-ion. The lesson thus re-
peated cannot be too well understood—that the holder of •
debenture or mortgage on a railway undertaking has, pro
fount, cast in his lot with the shareholders, and is, in
fact, a qualified proprietor of the line in which he is in-
terested.
The pan and disappointment which is caused by the
present condition of the Brighton Railway is all to be at-
tributed, the Daily News points out, to the fact that truth
has not been the constant aim of those who have pre-
pared the accounts, and that a fallacious appearance of
prosperity was kept up to facilitate operations by which the
shareholders have been excluded from any benefit to be
derived from their property it may be for years to come.
The shareholders have themselves to blame for their first
divergence from the path of that wise policy which for
many years gave them large and well-earned profits ; but
it was their directors who afterwards stood between them
and the corrective which an insight into the fruits of the
bad policy would speedily have supplied. The act of last
session provides that no dividend shall be declared
on any shares until the auditors have certified
that it is brand ttHe due thereon ; but the Caledonian au-
ditors, and those of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lin.
colnshire Railway, make the statutory declaration " sub-
ject to explanations," and in the accounts reported on in
each of these cases, the charges to capital grossly violate
some of the moat elementary principles of railway admi-
nistration. The Brighton auditors deal honestly and
boldly with the shareholders, and after pointing out that
there are no rules established by government defining
what shall be charged to capital and what to revenue,
plainly state that the adoption of • set of accounts by pro-
prietors is final and binding, and exonerates the auditors
from all responsibility. It can scarcely be doubted that
parliament desired last session to establish on behalf of an-
ditora amore effectual control over the conduct of directors
than will be found to result from its set ; but feebleness
has become the constitutional defect of our legislature.
Moreover it must be said that when it has taken measures
to place the means of enlightenment in the hands of a col-
lective proprietary its functions terminate. It cannot un-
dertake to direct the joist-stock enterprise of the country,
and under all imaginable changes shareholders will still
retain the power of self-ruin so dear to every true
Briton.

CARINNAL cr AND TR! STATE OT IRELART).

The fact that Cardinal Cullen now sees nothing in Ire
land but ever increasing misery, destitution, nakedness,
homelessness, squalor, and desperation, the Timm ex-
plains by the theory that he sees and hears things not
with the aid of hi, senses, but from intuitive conviction,
and gives a testimony which is the reflex of inner senti-
ments and ideas. The agricultural wealth of Ireland has
immensely increased, wages are nearly double what they
were two years ago, • very much larger proportion of
families are well housed, and crime, pauperism, and emi-
gration have steadily diminished. The Irish are far better
clothed than they were within MST ory, and as to another
of the Caramel's allusions the Irish keep their health
better with bare legs and feet than our own pose do with
shone, stockings, and thick coats.
The acusdard says if Ireland were in the condition de-
picted by Cardinal Cullen, and if she had been brought is
that condition, as suggested, by the government el Great
Britain, then Fenianiem would have the beet ensue which
baa ever been al aged on its behalf. Is it extraordinary
that poor ignorant men should betake them to the mid-
i new of Fenianiam, when their spiritual leaden teach them
sash Mesons as thews which are contained in Cardinal