The Sun.
London, England, 1849-08-02 00:00:00

deaths also increase. It seems the exact sciences have
not )et totached the questions of births and deaths, and
these matters go on in unregulated independence of the
enlightenment of the age. The mortality of towns is
stated to be less than it was, but we are authoritatively
informed that in July, August, and September (the re-
turn is to the end of May) the general mortality will be
increased. Since the Registrar-General so settled it at
the end of May, there is of course no doubt but that so
it must be.

CHRONICLE.—Two measures of projected legisla-
tion in reference to railways have been this year brought
forward only to be abandoned—the hurried close of the
session affording the real or ostensible cause of their
withdrawal. We refer to the Railway Audit Bill and
the Railway Abandonment Bill. With regard to the
first of these measures our opinion has been already
expressed. We have a strong objection in principle to
admitting Government interference and control over
undertakings of a private and commercial nature. We
can quite understand, indeed, the feeling under which
people, who are smarting from the consequences of their
own rashness and credulity are induced to ascribe their
calamities to a defect in the law, and to believe that an
Act of Parliament would be a sovereign specific for
their grievances. Suffering a bitter retribution for the
excesses of 1845, they are ready to believe that if a
Government Audit had only existed before that time,
there would have been no wild mania, no crushing re-
action, no George Hudson, no delusive premiuns, no
cooking of accounts, no distress, exile, and beggary
of deluded shareholders. But those persons can have
read commercial history to little purpose who have
not learned that in periods of high speculative ex-
citement, to which this country has at various times been
subject, every barrier which can restrain the money-
getting frenzy is thrown down, and the most stringent
laws have been found ineffectual to protect the sanguine
and the credulous from being the dupes and victims of
their own cupidity. It is not by Act of Parliament that
you can make men temperate in their desire for wealth,
discreet in the choice of their investments, or vigilant over
those with whom they have entrusted their money. It
is idle to suppose that any legal enactment can protect
the grown-up public against the self- delusions of inordi-
nate avarice or the consequences of rash speculation.
The mistakes which men commit, when left free to act
under their own guidance and responsibility, are often
disastrous to themselves and to their families ; but the
spectacle of such retributions is not altogether unwhole-
some to the public ; and the remedy for the mischief
is assuredly not to be found in destroying that free
agency and immunity from State interference which is
the essential condition of sound commercial enter-
prise. Where would have been the wealth and
prosperity of this country, if all the magnificent
undertakings which private capital has achieved
had required to be dry-nursed in Downing.
street, and if every project of public improvement had
been condemned to stand still until it was warranted
" free from risk" by an actuary of the Government?
The practical objections which apply to such a Bill as
Lord Monteagle's, in addition to that which lies in limine
against the principle of State supervision have been
evaded, but not answered, by its supporters. Nothing
is easier than to declaim against the rascality of direc-
tors, or to appeal to the devastation produced by over-
speculation, and then quietly to assume that directors
would be made honest, and ruined speculators be set
upon their legs again, by the operation of a Railway
Audit Act. But it is much less easy to disprove the
assertion to which an overwhelming majority of the
London and North-Western shareholders have pledged
their assent, that without such a degree of meddling and
vexatious interference as would embarrass the manage-
ment, neutralise the authority, and almost wholly destroy
the responsibility of directors, the official audit would be
a dead letter. Nor is it easy to show how the public
would gain, if the measure which is designed to
control the dishonest should so disgust the honourable
and high-minded as to render a seat at a railway board
no longer tenable by men of eminent position or inde-
pendent spirit. It has been stated on official authority,
that the revival in the next session of the Bill lately
withdrawn will be contingent on the spontaneous efforts
of the companies to meet the public demand, by origi-
nating in the meanwhile a more satisfactory method of
account keeping and a real and bona fide audit. We
know of no difficulty which should prevent these bodies
from fulfilling the required condition. The London and
North-Western Company has, indeed, already set an
example, by exhibiting in its half-yearly statement a
conspectus of its financial position which leaves little to
be desired in regard to perspicuity and fulness of detail.
IF other boards of directors withhold a like plenitude
of information, the fault will be in their own share-
holders alone ; nor is it very likely that any directors
will be found so rash and short-sighted as wilfully to
exhibit a false picture to their constituents, after the
terrible exposures which have lately taken place, and
the exemplary punishment that has overtaken official
dishonesty. The additional security of an impartial
audit, conducted by men wholly independent of boards
or chairmen, possessing the confidence of the share-
holders but not imposed upon them, would be a tribute
to public opinion which no directors should be unwill-
ing to pay, and which the Government ought to be well
contented to accept. We hope that by a cordial co-
operation for the promotion of this object, the di-
rectors of the principal companies will, before Par-
liament meets again, evince the sincerity of the objec-
tions which they have urged against Lord Monteagle's
Bill, and that they will thus deprive the Legislature of
any plea for that intrusive espionage which the jealous
spirit of commercial independence has in other cases re-
fused to tolerate. The other measure to which we have
adverted—the Railways Abandonment Bill—is one which
appeared to us to deserve a better fate than Ministerial
dilatoriness condemned it to undergo. It passed the
House of Commons, but was withdrawn on the show of
opposition in the House of Lords, in that agony of preci-
pitate haste when the smallest discussion of a Bill was
delay, and delay was defeat. It was impossible not to
admit the full force of the objections urged by Lord Stan-
ley and other Peers against being compelled to swallow
undigested so sweeping and comprehensive a measure,
involving the virtual repeal of numerous Acts of Parlia-
ment, annulling many solemn contracts, and unsettling
divers complicated relations. The objection was good,
but the Bill to which it was fatal might have proved, had
time sufficed to discuss and consider it, a material alle-
viation to the embarrassments of the railway interest.
It would have enabled a competent majority of share-
holders, without the expense and delay of an application
to Parliament, to obtain power, by a reference to the
Railway Commissioners, for abandoning either the
whole or any portion of a line which financial or other
reasons might make it inexpedient to complete. The
power of sanctioning the suspension of railway works
already exists, and has been largely exercised by the
Railway Board. This measure would have carried their
jurisdiction a step further, by authorising them to license
a postponement sine die. The Bill contained provisions
—which, if not adequate to their object, might easily
have been made so—for compensating parties to whom
the abandonment of inchoate works might have been in-
jurious, and for indemnifying landowners in case of loss
or inconvenience arising from the annulment of their
bargains with the companies. We regret that, owing to
that lack of skill in the marshalling of business which
has marred several useful Bills during the past session,
a measure has been frustrated which would have afforded
a locus penitentice highly acceptable to shareholders at
the present time, and have given a seasonable relief, by
the liberation of capital, to other undertakings which it
may be too late or otherwise inexpedient to recede from.