The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-28 00:00:00

FRE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 28, 1865.

peared by section 23 and the articles of association, by
which a distinction was drawn between a register of mem-
bers and a scrip register, and consequently the list sent to
the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies, which included all
the names in the register of members, and excluded all
those of share or scrip holders, was in compliance with the
act. Secondly, that if that view were incorrect, the com-
pany having acted under the advice of counsel in returning
a list to the registrar with the scrip holders omitted, could
not in law be said to have unlawfully and wilfully made
default in complying with the provisions of the act.
Thirdly, if these two grounds failed, the 87th section would
stay any further proceedings before the court after it was
proved, as it had been, that the Court of Chancery had
made an order for the winding up of thncompany.
The summons was accordingly dismissed.

Mr. Lewis, on the part of the complainant, asked for a
case to take before the Court of Queen's Bench, which his
lordship thought a very proper course to pursue, and
thought it was one of those cases that the more the circum-
stances were laid before the public the better it would be.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

GOVERNMENT AND THE RAILWAYS.

Mr. WATICIN, M.P., at the meeting of the Manchester,
Sheffield, and Linconshire Railway Company on Wednes-
day, said they had heard that the railways were to be pur-
chased by the Government under the Act of 1844, and an
essay on the subject would be shortly published. The
Economist had been writing very able articles advocating a
somewhat startling policy. Railway Boards were declared
to be constituted of ill-sorted materials, and railway pro-
prietors to be unstable. The purchase of the whole
£400,000,000 of railway property by the nation was alleged
to be the remedy for defective management, high rates,
and a discordant policy. But upon the question of control
and working these writers tried to escape an obvious
difficulty by proposing to let the working to contractors.
Both in England and in France this had been tried, and
given up after trial. The first Russian railways were
worked by American contractors at so much a verst, and it
was found that the mile-posts had a-curious attraction for
each other, and for two years a third more distance was paid
for than was ever worked over. Such a mode of working
the 12,000 miles of British and Irish railways would be too
large an affair for individuals, and the contractors would
again become companies. Where, then, would be the gain of
individual force or interest which was insisted upon ? lithe
State owned the corpus of the railways and the moving
plant and a contractor or contracting company worked and
applied them, what a temptation would exist to run down
the property and plant in order to extract a higher rate of
profit ! In fact, it was found in practice that where the
owners and workers were one and had one interest, the in-
tegrity of the property was and must be more fully consi-
dered than where one party had an interest to spend as little
in renewals and the other as much as possible. A high con-
dition of repair meant a high condition of safety, and he
preferred himself to travel upon a company's rather than
on a contractor's railway. The act of 1844 merely affected
railways constructed after May 1,1845, so that part of the
Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Company's line
was under it, and part not. For himself, and speaking en-
tirely in the interests of the companies he belonged to, he
was ready to express his entire readiness to hand over to
Government and Government officials the property, the
working of it, and all its thousand-fold responsibilities and
anxieties. Many of those who had helped to make this
grand railway system what it was would, personally Speak-
ing, rejoice to find that Government did as much for the
country in the future as the companies had done in the past.
But they must consider the question not merely as railway
proprietors, but as citizens of a great and free country, and
in its bearings upon the industrial life and political inde-
pendence of the people. The country had always grown
greater when Government had let industry alone, and had
always gone back when Government had put itself in the
place of the self-reliant action of the people. Of late years,
following the light of political economy, their general po-
licy had been for the people to do as much for themselves
and the Government as little as possible. He feared, there-
fore, that whatever his own interests, he couldnot argue in
favour of their increasing the national debt by £400,000,000
or more,
sand of allowing the working of the lines to be
farmed as the French taxes were before the Revolution. He
did not contend that the present system was perfect. It had
had to be elaborated from day to day by perpetual experi-
ment. It was now only 30 years old, and its earlier stages
were harassed and impeded by an amount of obstruction on
the part of both Houses of Parliament and of landowners
which was well illustrated in the " Life of George Stephen-
son." In fact, he contended that Government and Govern-
ment contractors would make it less
perfect, and might stop
the tide of progress and improvement. The act of 1844 could
only come into force after a special act had been passed, so
that it was merely declaratory after all. It proposed the
power to reduce the tolls of all lines, paying more than 10
per cent, but so that their dividends should not thereby be
less than 10 per cent. And it proposed the power to pur-
chase all other lines sanctioned after 1845, at 25 years' pur-
chase upon the " annual divisible profits" of the preceding
three years, subject, however,to arbitration should the com-
pany consider such a price not equal to the real value of
the line. All that was fair enough, but it must, he thought,
be a mere dead letter for various reasons. There were
some 250,000 employes connected with railways. Only ima-
gine a party Government armed with the nomination and
control of such a body, and able to distribute to political
partisans or the incapable relatives of electioneering agents
some £12,000,000 a year in salaries and wages. How long
would political independence be English words? (Ap-
plause.) How soon would our country resemble France in
the latter days of Louis Philippe, when it was said that for
every voter there was a place and placeman ? But while
agreeing with the Times newspaper that it would be unwise
and impolitic, even if possible, tomake our Government the
common carrier for the nation, he thought the agitation of
this question paved the way for some reconsideration, after
all these years of experience, of the relations of the railway
companies, the State, and the general public. That recon-
sideration would start with the inquiry how far it was con-
sistent with true political economy, and, if consistent, to
efficiency
State
iency whichof the great
likelyeat railway to ex-
tend
what extent was further or other legislation required ? And
it would include those political measures of concert between
the railway
byrai mutual
yinuatel
actionrests and th
the
ffi
machine. He understood that one hon. member was think-
ing of a Parliamentary committee on the Act of 1844, and
that others were meditating a commission. He confessed that
a committee of a moribund Parliament seemed hardly able
to deal with this question, but a commission fairly selected
was quite another thing. A commission which contained
the elements of high thought and undoubted practical ex-
perience would not ignore political consequences in dealing
with commercial interests, nor would it be led away by the
prejudice which local claims or sectional trade interests
might express through members of Parliament on the eve
of a general election. Of course he spoke in his individual
capacity only, but: it seemed to him that a commission
which included such names as Neill and Newmarch, and
representing the practical railway men, Galton, Swift,
Clarke, and Aliport, ought to be satisfactory to all, and that
such a body of men of thought and of action might well re-
port to the next Parliament upon the fliture relations of
railways with the State, upon any general legislation re-
quired by public interests, upon the question of credit, and
upon the economy and efficiency of the future. It must be
always borne in mind that railways could not be station-
ary. The system was yet far from complete. Every line
must keep expending capital to keep pace with its traffic,
and as severity of the service increased the working cost
augmented. It was not like a lighthouse, the cost of which
was the same whether one ship or a thousand paid toll for
passing. Every new ton or person carried involved a new
outlay of capital after a very short limit of time, and a new
and additional cost. A commission might very well consider
whether four or five large systems bound to interchange
with each other by a thorough system of working might
not be better than 50 or 60 smaller ones; whether a better
co-operation in the interests of the public might not be
established between company and company ; and whether
-rates might not be equalised, perhaps in some cases lowered
with advantage, both to the railways and the public. The
State, too, might consider how much of the £500,000 or
£600,000 a year paid for postal and military service to rail-
ways might be paid by the mere loan of the Government
credit and guarantee on loans and capital, ill place of, as
now, money payment taken out of the taxation of the coun-
try ; and it might listen to the arguments in favour of allow-
ing a confederation of large railway companies to become
mutual guarantors for a limited amount of capital avail-
able for trustees. Evidence might also be taken as to the
better adaptation of the plant of railway companies for the
conveyance of military stores and cavalry horses ; and some
scheme might be devised whereby the inventions of mecha-
nical men should not, as was too often the case now, be
absorbed by rapacious patentees, or be thrown aside by
their very abundance, but be carefully considered and re-
ported upon by some competent tribunal.