The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC .JOURNALS.
TIME.--The enormous difficulties which have beset
our re-ill& system from its birth, and which threaten
rather toirdwetse than to give way, have prepared the
public for the important preposition about to be sub-
mined -to the Legislature. The three great companies
entrusted with our internal communications westward of
the metroodis, after a protracted and ruinous struggle
for territffY, and after many fruitless attempts at traces
and compromises, are about to try an actual amalgama-
tior. The three chiefs, it is, said, have decided upon
taking the sense of their several' shareholders on a Bill
to *tie effect. What the judgment of shareholders will
and ought to b 3 on the pecuniary question there can be
little doubt. A monopoly commanding the traffic of at
least half this island is a property of indefinite and al-
most optional value; for it is worth, in fact, as much as
the fortunate owners may choose to extract out of it. But
to treat this as a private or purely mercantile affair would
argue either ignorance or cunning. It is a great poli-
tical question. It has long been perceived by the more
discerning portion of the public, such at least as were
not themselves absorbed and blinded by railway specu-
lation, that it must come to this in the end. There was
no eacaping a choice between a competition ruinous to
the shareholders, or an amalgamation dangerous to the
public. The one is the stormy Scylla, the other the de-
vouring Charybdis of the question. The nation at large
is vastly, we may almost say equally, interested to
avoid either extreme; for it suffers not less by the
ruin of too adventurous undertakers than by contribut-
ing to their success at too high a cost. Unfortunately,
the Legislature was seduced by the promises of compe-
tition. Private wealth and enterprise, the opinion of
shareholders, the good sense of Englishmen, the cautious
habits of trade, and, above all, the old-fashioned system
of the country, were the ideas adopted by our rulers, and
allowed to prevail against comprehensive and national
plans. A new emereency:was met on antiquated prin-
ciples, and modes of action which it had been found ne-
cessary to supersede, to simplify, and to generalize in
every department of the public service, were gratuitously
adopted in an entirely new field of legislation. Rail-
ways were treated simply as private speculations; and
only five years since there was passed an Act which took
fur granted that. every railway would remain to the end
of time in its original and separate form, such as it was
when it received the royal assent. A change has come
over the scene. Amalgamation has become a necessity
and a law of railway progress. There was no help for
it, and it was evidentln useless to contend against a
nrahtice so deeply iounded in utility and profit.
The great trunk lines soon affiliated and an-
nexed all their feeders and tributaries,' whether
existing or intends d. So rapid has been this process
that at the present moment nearly all the traffic of
England and Wales, including the metropolis, and the
southern, western, eastern, and midland counties, is in
the hands of seven or eight hostile companies. No one
who reflected on this state of things, and who -saw the
gigantic ruin certain to attend such gigantic competition,
could doubt the next step. It is now proposed to amal-
gam its. three of these great companies. When the rest
of the heptarchy will follow is only a question of time.
Such a consummation was the very farthest from the
thoughts of our statesmen and legislators only three
years since. They no more dreamt of one monster
company than they did of a democratic revolution. They
sate -only a crowd of competitors and a Babel Of dis-
cordant interests and opinions. Could they have fore-I
• seen what was so shortly to• take place, it is probable'
they would have spared themselves some of the over-
powering labours of inquiry and selection, and spared
the promoters also some of their ruinous expenses. Nor
can we doubt that a much simpler, mere effective, and
more economical arrangement ,of lines would have been
adopted. But the old question now returns to Parlia•
men shi a new feral. Simplification of railer:lr manage-
mentaind unity of direction is no longer a problematical
advantage, but an escerta;ned necessity; and Par-
liamsnt will now have the difficult tads of allowing u
colossal mouopo'y, but keeping it within proper bounds.
But the triumvirs who hove partitioned so large a por-
tion ol,,thia island, and %ala s are now about to ask Go-
vernmenito consolidate their rule, may spare themselves
all further trouble in the affair, unless- they are prepared
to saarait to a regular national control. 'Without this
eenatiaa Noir demand is extravagant indeed. The
carriage of passengers is a traffic not very different from
. the carriage of letters. The difference is more in a few
practical difficulties than in principle; and these practi-
cal difficulties have been vastly reduced by the invention
of the railroad. A monopoly of letters in the hands of
Government, and a monopoly of passengers in the hands
of a private company, would inevitably suggest that
'either the one or the other must be wrong. Railways
are now the highways of Englerid, and therefore of
public right. If we are consigned to one vast manage-
ment, we must at least be assured that the convenience
of all shall ;;bt be sacrificed to the profit of some. The
management of the P. st-office itself will suggest a model.
' ICs net revenue to the State might' hive been made
three or four times what it is now, brit adiantage
has been taken of its wealth to cheapen postage, to
multiply communications and deliveries, and in
everyaiway to consult the general convenience. By the
samPßltie the State will be bound to claim a power of
dictating now branches, new trains, new accommodatioes,
and lower fares. It is not likely that much dictation will
• be neceasarry, but the State must reserve to itself the
right before it constitutes so vast a monopoly. We have
just had some small indication of -what a monster union
will be likely to attempt, in the recent alterations of the
Great Western Company. Besides withdrawing two
tildes, it has suddenly suspended the practice of return-
tickets, on the faith of which many persons base settled
near the stations down the line—some at a considerable
di-th:ce. The directors will hardly allow this to be
sti-gtdatised- as a breach of faith, but it will operate as
such on those who have trusted to the permanency of the
company's rules, and to the inherent reasonableness of
this particular provision. Certainly- the unfortunate
dupes will feel themselves betrayed. They-deem, not
without some reason, that they have a vested interest in
a practice which induced them to settle where they are,
to rent or buy a house, to form corinexions, and to adopt
a certain scale of expehiditure. All their calculations are
put out by a change which, in some cases, will make a
cliff. rence of '2Ol, or 30/. a year—no trifle to a man of
limited income. The fact shows most opportunely how
completely the whole country would be at the mercy of
a private sp-culation, if the State should abdicate its
right of interfering for the common weal.
FIERALIt—The news which we publish to-day in
another column states that the fate of Vienna has been
decided. Supposing the Imperial army wholly suc-
cessful, the difficulties of the Imperial Government are
but beginning with this unhappy victory—fir every vic-
tory intuit be considered unfortunate which a monarch,
however just his cause, or however unexceptionable his
character or gevernment, gains over the most' intelligent
and instructed—and hitherto the most faithful and obe-
dient portion of his subjects. But though an amiable
and well-meaning man, the Government of the Emperor
of Austria has never been unexceptionable, and Ferdi
nand himself, weak, wavering, almost idiotic, is now, and
ever has been, a mere puppet and plaything in the hands
of others. As the Emperor's directors and counsellors
have always had their own personal objects to serve,
and have occasionally neitherbeen distinguished by in-
telligence, by honesty, by patriotism, nor by any of the
finer qualities of the human mind—as, in fact, this
Imperial and (loyal personage has been too often
the victim- and the dupe of an interested knot of
intriguers, it is no marvel to those who had observed
his previous career, and the persons by whom he
wag surrouaded, that he was first moved from Vienna to
Innsr.ruck—then back again to Vienna—that he was
then invited to Prague, and that, lastly, he left his ca-
p-
eal a second time to find refuge in the capital of Mo-
ravia, in the city of Olinilez, eighty miles north-east of
Vienna. No doubt the seeds of discontent and revolution
were sewn -long before the time of the present Emperor.
Both the discontent and the revolution are mainly trace•
Ole to the stand-still, impassive system of the late
Emperor, and the corrupt and material means by which
Metternich carried that system into effect. But allowing
that the present Emperor is not personally to blame for
the result of a system which existed from the period of
his birth, and giving every full effect to these' candid
conSideratioes, we cannot, in many instances, regard
the conduct or the measures of Ferdinand as wise or
discreet, since the flight of his late Arch-Chancellor,
Metternich, to Englanrl, in the month of March last.
ranbFromooflewthat period, flew scarcely more than six
s ago, Ferdinand has confided the intsrcsts
hisof empire to six or seven Ministers, and from
the weakness and indecision of the men, or from the arts
of the Came :11 re aby which lie has been surrounded, each
of ' these MiniSters has retired-or been dismissed, after a
few weeks' service. To
rath—to Kaiourath, Pill Itletternich succeeded Kolous
senberg—to end°rEr—to Pillersdorft; Wessenberg,Wes-
then Dobbleff—then Kraus ap-
pesred'o-n the scene;
and cap
and w
(a)ris, Wessenberg, who is
'low with the Enipenor at'
hem all must
admit to be an experienced
zishlbe politician. Such
ebedmitted, denote
frequent changes, however, it
vacillation and irresolution, and the
are
system be
one we from
and consistent system of
one of concession or of resistance. Fart
saying that there have niPstr)ibieeeYn—wgrileealt,tilliseursaeulunliliesegr of
etaileefiapdierdt
were in no
of the people and democratic party
Vienna. The riots in reference to paper money, at
the
cud of September, encouraged by Swowara,
degree defsnsible; and no misconduct or duplicity of the
Court c rt eiscuse the barbarous murders of Lemberg and
Laayar. The setting of raves and nationalities against
eaels Other -in such an empire as Austria is,
however, a dangerous and a desperate game
for a Gairernment to play against discontent, whe-
ther well or ill-founded—for it is sure to evoke
the wildest and most untameable passions that burn
in the human breast. The elements thus set loose are
now waging a war of ex!ernination against each other,
and horror where the conflict is to end, the wisest of men
cannot foreshadow or tell with anything even approtch-
ing even to probability. This alone is certain, that the
Emperor has confided his Imperial Crown to the keeping
of is .Field Marshals, and no doubt those brave and
.Generals will do all that in them lies to
re-inl‘rate and re-establish the empire, if it can be
eat iblitaed by the power of the sword. Whatever may
be tile restiits of the struggle between the Emperor and
his subjects, the Consrnander-in-Chief of the Imperial
army, Prince Windischgratz, cannot be blamed either
by tho Viennese or the public opinion of Europe. There
's not a braver, a more clement, or a more able general
lin the Imperial service, or one to whom ;he expression
" all Sclavoirian," used in reference to him by a morning
paper or S.turdsy, less applies. For nearly five and
forty years Winclischgratz, now in his sixty-first year,
has been in the Imperial service, and has ever been
known as a resolute but humane officer. The large pos-
aessione which this able commander inherits in Bohe-
• raise Austria, Hungary, Styria,
and Suable, forbid the
notion that he is personally
influenced by those
jealousies of race which exercise-so much influence ovf r
the mind of the Croatian Ban, Jellachich. The noble-
man who possesses sixteen large estates within the Arch-
duchy-sal Austria, one of them, so close to Vienna as
Schoenbruen, the censmaeder who takes his title of