The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-19 00:00:00

all events, be equally needful to recognise any similar ar-
rangements of your company—an iaea which has never
been suggested by any one, nor has such consent ever been
given by my directors.
"By the affiance of the London and North-Western
Company with the Midland, the North Staffordshire, and
other railway companies, they possess an uninterrupted
communication by railway, not only between the north
and south of England, but between both of them and the
west of England, including south Wales through Worces-
ter, Gloucester, and Bristol.
"The only avenue for traffic between the Great Western
system at Wolverhampton (where our line unites with the
Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway) and the north,
exists by means of the two Shrewsbury lines, those com-
panies being independent of the London and North-Western
Company.
"My directors are apprised by your letter that it is
nevertheless the full intention of your company to resist
and oppose subsisting• traffic arrangements between the
Great Western and Shrewsbury Companies, and your
company is known to be endeavouring to obtain a control
over those lines. Our alliance is treated by your company
as a violation of good faith, and you allude to recent dis-
closures,' &c.
" It is not the purpose of my directors here to vindicate
or defend the practice alleged against an individual, op-
posed to your views, of splitting shares to multiply votes,
which they know to have been extensively practised by
your company, when endeavouring to defeat the Great
Western agreement for the purchase of the Birmingham.
and Wolverhampton lines in the year
ive 1847. The fabriconfir-
a-
tion of a common seal, in order to g prete c
mation to the spurious agreements, was simultaneously re-
sorted to in that case. This has been again attempted by
the London and North-Western adherents and agents em-
ployed in 1851 in the case of setting up a similar instru-
ment purporting to bear the seal of the Shrewsbury and
Birmingham Company, in order to defeat a previous agree-
ment entered into by that company with the Great Wes-
tern and the Shrewsbury and Chester Companies.
" If proof be required of these facts they can be readily
furnished by documents and evidence, which will show
that some of the directors and principal agents of the
London and North-western Company split numberless
shares into the names of servants, labourers, and even fac-
tory children, to carry their object. When writs were
issued to enforce the calls, your agents, Messrs. Beale and
Colmore, of Birmingham, gave the undertaking to appear
for many of them. It would be superfluous, in the face of
allegeddirco
director and
are di soeffildocissellireeosi
such proceedings, to argue with your company whether
totahfbelsei!hiorl are rw
whethern c
at
noodrn
Bir-
minghamthe'n t
thepart `cfa
in violation of good faith, and contrary to the intention
of the Legislature.'

" Reveiting, however, to the substance of the proposi-
tion now under consideration, my directors believe that it
may be thus explained :
" In order to promote ' a cessation of hostility between
our respective companies,' the London and North-
western Company suggest that the directors of the
Great Western Company shall, under a pledge with
heavy penalties, undertake never to charge lower
rates to the public than themselves, in order to
permit the London and North-western, with the
aid of their allies (the Midland and North Stafford-
shire Companies), to convey all the traffic which they can
obtain by equal rates between places on their respective
lines and the west of England, while, on the other hand,
the London and North-Western Company, nominally pro-
posing equal rates for the traffic of other districts, aro to
be at full libcfq to exclude the Great Western from ob-
taining any traffic at all, by severing, if they can, the alli-
ance, and by cancelling the working arrangements for in-
terchange of traffic between the Great Western and the
two Shrewsbury Companies. In fact, they are to be freo
to seize upon and annihilate the only railway conflation
between our two systems, by which at present any sort of
competition with themselves could be carried on beyond
Wolverhampton.
" The exertions notoriously made by your company to
exclude the traffic of our districts from all places to the
north of Wolverhampton, and to close up the Shrewsbury
lines against any continuity of working arrangements, may
indeed be very natural for those who are alining to protect
the interests of a great monopoly ; but my directors must
decline now, as they have ever done, to fetter themselves,
under such circumstances, with obligations which may
hereafter be dexterously employed as weapons, on public
grounds, against themselves, failing in the meantime to
produce even the semblance of a paceful and permanent
settlement.

" This board cannot consent to do any act or permit any
act to be done by others which is at all at variance with
subsisting engagements, and least of all will they acquiesce
in any principle calculated to embarrass themselves in
ulterior measures, without some corresponding advantage
to their proprietors. The directors would, of course, be
glad to discover an effectual mode of settling all matters
in difference with the London and North-Western Com-
pany, but the conditions of any arrangements must be in
all respects entirely reciprocal, fair, and conclusive in their
effects. The covenants must be such as can be legally en-
forced upon all parties concerned, and due regard must be
had to the engagements of each company with their re-
spective allies.
" Remunerative rates, as it appears to my board, may
be adjusted by agreement between all parties concerned,
and rendered equal without injury to the public or injus-
tice to the companies, provided they do not aim at exclu-
sion and obstruction of trade, but as means of insuring
adequate facilities for the unrestricted transit and inter-
change of traffic between diterent systems, of which prin-
ciple Mr. Cardwell's committee seems to have expressed, in
their report, an unqualified approval.
" I remain, dear sir, yours very sincerely,

(Signed) i` CHARLES A. SAUNDERS, Secretary.
" Charles E. Stewart, Esq., Secretary,
" London and North-Western Railway Company,
Euston Station."

" London and North-Western Railway,
Secretary's Office, Euston Station,
London, Aug. 17, 1853.
" Dear Sir,—l have to acknowledge your letter of the
15th instant, and to express regret at the very hostile and
even bitter tone and spirit in which the proposals of this
company for a cessation of hostilities (couched, it is be-
lieved, in calm and temperate language) have been re-
ceived by you.
"Much of your letter is occupied by a repetition of cer-
tain charges, to the effect that the funds of the London
and North-Western Company have been applied to the
purchase of shares in order to defeat Great Western
purposes.
"These charges have been publicly and authoritatively
denied ; and I feel sure my board will decline again to
notice them, or to enter upon any discussions which are
irrelevant to the immediate question.
" On the 26th -alt. the managers of the Midland and of
this company met you by appointment at Paddington, to
discuss the question of rates, &c., for traffic between Bris-
tol and Birmingham--traffic, be it borne in mind, with
which the Shrewsbury railways have no connection. At
that interview, however, you introduced parties, declaring
them to be the representatives of those undertakings, with
apparently no other object than that of obtaining an in-
direct recognition of the alleged agreements between those
whom they purported to represent and your company.
" Having openly declined, on several occasions, and
more particularly when a committee of shareholders had,
during last autumn, certain communications with our two
boards, to recognise the existence of exclusive agreements
inconsistent with our own relations towards the Shrews-
bury companies, it is not very apparent why you should
again raise this point of difference, and especially on an
occasion when the particular traffic in question had no re-
ference to those companies. The mode in which you in-
troduced the subject, permit me to say, did not appear to
my directors quite consistent with that candour which
should characterise such discussions, and which it has
always been their wish to encourage.
" I feel sure I am expressing the opinions of my direc-
tors when I say, they regret that communications should
take place which are little calculated to smooth the way
for an accommodation of the differences existing between
the two companies. Their offer (renewed in Mr. Stewart's
letter of the sth inst.) of equality of rates, without limi-
tation of district, distance, or party—their willingness to
treat with all companies, as free and independent agents
—and the whole tenor of their communication, which con-
templates freedom of transit, sufficiently negative your
charge of their aiming at a great monopoly.'
"My directors entertain an earnest desire to establish
and maintain friendly relations with your company, as well
as with all others, on a fair and honourable basis. And
while they decline to compromise the just rights of their
proprietors, they will not lessen the chances of attaining
so desirable an object by raising needless points of differ-
ence, or entering upon the wide field of discussion opened
by your letter upon a variety of topics which have no re-
ference tQ the question immediately before them.
"I am, dear sir, faithfully yours,
" For as. E. Stewart, Sec.,
"C. A. Saunders, Esq." "R. SAVILE.

" Great Western Railway, Paddington Terminus,
August 18, 1853.

" Dear Sir,—l venture to suggest, in reply to your let-
ter of yesterday's date, that it will be more consistent
with the professions of peace which almost invariablyform
the last paragraph of every letter received from your com-
pany, to abstain from making attacks upon those with
whom you are in correspondence, than, as on the present
occasion, after making an unprovoked taunt about `recent
disclosures in violation of good faith,' to decline again to
notice charges which you affirm to have been made and
authoritatively denied.
"My reply to your former letter charged your company
with the same practices in 1847 and 1851, some of which
you had been instructed to allege as committed subse-
quently by a director of the Shrewsbury and Birmingham
Railway, in defence of their alliance with the Great West-
ern Company, upon which allegation your company now
think proper to justify resistance to agreements which you
have, nevertheless, been resisting long before the present
disclosure.

Great `,lpi3adicawntd_et_nshteoe:, in my letter, assert, as you assume, that the
funds of the London and North Western Company have
bacacusapplietidortho the purchase of shares, in order to defeat
7chnaropwurpgeseomtsefasod,rtenho.r, for various reasons, is that
and maintained is, that your
raapnateeddlaragoedsms for the employment' of agents ;
thefor tys gliflto
prevent the seal
agreements with this
companies independentand b defrayed expenses incurred in the of-
your company split shares to increase
legalvthoetepea;rtiaer,caccoalattimotghonefor
was fabricated, and resolutions
company ;
7sueirif the London and North
due Performance of contracts
passed to
-Weswteen
Company ;
pany were driven to means the Great Weste • ''' ern
Western Com-
ment, to maintain them,ChancerY, and eve t
n ually to Parlia-
ment,
The same plan, which
against two companies which was unsuccessf ll employed
Western Company to the south connexion with
now in active operation with
of Wolverhampton,
the Great
with the Great Western Company
two companies connected
is
Wolver-
hampton : with this differencpeao7l to the north ocfonnoected
North-Western agents, after inalciy, that the London lvenr.
case of the Shrewsbury and BirminghamnaiPurious seal in and
splitting shares in the case of the SwsnCrr'PrY' and
Company, by placing them in the names eel2'qa.ll" Chester
their company, attached principally to the Euston- -ants of
whom they sent free by special train to vote at station,
meeting, pretend to make recent disclosures in viol' special
good faith, and attack them, while offering terms oatten,f
to each and all of the companies whose conduct they l'e
pugn, such terms being devised to admit their competitionm-
against us, and to baffle any corresponding competitio
against themselves by defeating alliance with the Shrews-
bury Company.
" In reply to your other observations, I must bo permit-
ted to observe that the managers of the Midland Company
and the London and North-Western Company did not meet
me to discuss the question of rates, Stc. for traffic bet
Bristol and Birmingham exclusively. if that had been the
sole object, Captain Finish's presence would have been quite
unnecessary. It was for the purpose of discussing the more
general question, and when Mr. Joseph Sanders wrote to
me on that account to propose Captain Iluish joining in