The Sun.
London, England, 1855-12-24 00:00:00

CAPTAIN BUISB ON RAILWAY
MANAGEMENT.

A dinner was given on Friday evening at the Clarence
Hotel, Manchester, in honour of Mr. Eborall, the
gentral manager of the East Lancashire Railway, on
the occasion of hia leaving the district to take the ma-
nagement of the South-Eastern Railway. Captain
finish, the general manager of the London and North-
Westtrn Railway, presided, and a large number of rail-
way directors and officers from all parts of the country
were present.

The CHAIRMAN, in proposing the " Health of Mr.
Eborall," adverted at considerable length to the position
and policy of railway management. He said, however
singular it might seem that so gigantic an instrument
and so wide-spread a sestem as that of the railway in-
terest of Great Britain should be in its present state of
depression and collapse, while the railway system of
every other country, derived from this country, was ex-
tending and improving, the causes of this were palpable
to every one. In a great commercial country like this,
teeming with money and overflowing with the annual
increase of its wealth, the railway system, starting into
existence full blown, and far exceeding the anticipations
of its -creators, elicited a spirit of excitement, of spe-
culation, and of almost wild delirium of extension,
welch we were now only too ready to regret, but
winch, at the time, no cue was powerful enough to
withstand. Parliament, which ought to have stemmed
the popular madness, first hounded on the commer-
cial enterprise of this country to a far greater and
more rapid extension of railways than was prudent
or expedient, and then, having excited competition
as the only means of regulating the proceedings of
these great corporations, stepped in and said, "Hav:ag
granted competition, we can compel you now, under a
sort of penal power, to assist each other to break each
other's heads." (Cheers and laughter.) It was in vain
that the older corporations lifted up their voice, and
preached the doctrine that competition in railways was
combination at a later period, and that where one line
pail 5 per cent. it did not follow as an inevitable se-
quence that two lines through the same district would
pay 2. per cent. each. Parliament flung the railway
system broadcast upon the country, without any consi-
deration whatever, and left to railway managers and
director?, the unhappy task of ( releavouring to pick out
this tangled mass and to weave into something like a
system the difficult and almost inextricable knot into
which they had tied them. (Hear, hear.) Bat it was
not in Englishmen to sit down contented with their
arm. folded ; and, as it was useless to regret the past,
let them consider how to retrieve the grand cardinal
error which bad been made in this country, to rescue
the wreck of this noble property, and reinstate it on
something like a substantial basis. He, for one, had no
hesitation or despair whatever of the railway system of
Great Britain, it placed under proper management and
judicious guidance. (Hear.) But, unless we steered a
totally different course from that so fruitlessly pursued for
years past, he feared we had not seen eho end of the min-
chic f. ro rescue railway property from its present condi-
lion lie looked to prudence and publicity—for he thought
the more public the proceedings were to the shareholders,
the greater the element of ecurity in railway property—but
above all, to the returning good sense of directors and
managers, in concentrating their energies rather for
good than evil, and directing their efforts rather to be-
nefit and conciliate each ether than to snatch an undue
advantage. (Hear, hear.) Railway managers had been
too apt to forget this policy, but he confessed that in his
railway career those parts to which he looked back with
greatest satisfaction were those in which he had endea-
voured honestly, and he hoped to some extent success-
fully, to harmonise all the surrounding interests, and
bring one great system of fusion into profitable and ac-
cordant action. (Cheers.) However much boards of
directors might exert themselves to conduct and regu-
late railway undertakings, it was in a very great degree
on the temper, moderation, and spirit with which rail-
way managers carried out their communications with
each other that the prosperity of the railway system
must depend. (Cheers.) Under the circumstances of
his present position in the railway world, the railway
manager must be a sort of rant axis of his kind, He
'oust, of course, be a man of general education and en-
larged views, and he must have address and manner,
because he had to meet every class and description of
men, from the peer to the peasant. -Unless he had
a largo knowledge of human life, ho would not be
able to cope with the difficult positions in which ho
was frequently placed ; and he must have a grasp of
wind that would look over small things and take
li-
beral and comprehensive. He must have kindly
views of neighbouring interests as well as his own ;
and he must have long and earnestly studied his pro-
fession, both in its scientific and in its commercial
part. It was a very difficult and very large study,
and he believed the public at large were but little aware,
alninxejeotfy,raainlaciayh,oowf
when they travelled
att
how much thought, esmoothlyti o attention, along
a
many aching heads, hadbeenh given to the provision of
that accommodation which tey enjoyed. The manager
of a great trunk line must be aware of all the continually
changingry, andaTting commercial and political circumstances of the
cou ought to be continually studying them.
He must have an iron constitution, health, and activity;
for it Was no light task that railway managers undertook.
Sleepless nights and anxious days, dry weather and wet,
frost and snow, sun and sunshine, all were the same to
the railway man ; there he must be. No pursuit re-
quired more imperatively that a man must have the power
of regulating his temper ; and he would beseech the
railway manager never to lose sight of the claims of his
subordinates. (Hear.) He must be a man of regtilarity
and punctuality, in the strictest sense ; and, finally, the
two qualities on which he placed the greatest value were
truthfulness and integrity. He believed immense mix.
chief had been done to the railway interest, not by the
want of common vulgar truth as between man and man,
but by the aissence of that delicate perception of truthful-
ness, that horror of deceit, that repudiation of all
chicanery, and the absence of anything approaching to
trickery on the part of railway managers, which was so
much to be desired. He would not merely piste, the
value of integrity on the ground that it was the best
policy, but on the higher ground that they were to en-
deavour to raise the moral character of the system
with which they were connected, and to rescue, if possi-
ble, 300,000,0001. of property, employing Borne hun-
dreds of thousands of men ; and they could only do that
by elevating their own conduct. (Cheers.)
Mr. EBORALL responded, and several toasts were
afterwards honoured.

Von Pleas, President of the Prussian Nobles,
We learn by the telegraph from Berlinebamber of
thatb thfePnce
is dead. • OFFICIRS —Her THE QUEEN AND THE CRIMEAN Ma-
jesty the Queen
moreis distinguished makingisti
nag
ucollection
officers
apheontgoaggreaaphiinc
portraits of the
Crimean campaign. Her Majesty's sympathy with
wounded soldiers is well known, as also is the hospi-
talitythler Cri
and gracious attention shown to the officers who
have returned to England on leave or otherwise. To this
her Majesty has added the compliment of expressing a
wish to have a photographic portrait taken for the royal
portfolio. The artist who has been entrusted with the
taking of the pictures is Mr. Alayall, the well-known
photographer of Argyll-place, Regent-street. The molt
recent addition to the royal collection is the portrait o
Sir Colin Campbell. The gallant general sat a day or
two since ; and, in spite of a fog by no means favourable
to such operations, Mr. Mayall succeeded in producing
a remarkably fine and characteristic likeness: