The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-14 00:00:00

N OVEMBER 14, 1848.
,„

is a perquisite. Genteel people have genteel names for
dirty things. Why may not a legislator have the dis-
posal of a tew offices as well as any other man? But it
behoves the people to look to the working of this enor-
mous engine of threatening corruption. It behoves
constituencies to tell their Representatives that, in
this palpable particular, they expect them to be honest
and unpurchased, else we shall have judgment
against us without a hearing, passed by our own bribed
servants. We are jealous, and we have great need to
be so, of the Government itself, as to'patronage ; con-
ducted, as that Government is, by two factions, which
trade in partizanship. The mass of rich appointments
in India are withheld from the Ministry of the day,
upon the disgraceful, but accepted plea, that they would
be given unfairly and for bad purposes. We make the
holders of East India Stock place-givers, because we
have not a Government that we can trust with its most
natural fucctions. Aro we to suppose railway directors,
the children of gambling speculation, more immaculate?
But for the evils of heaping this great patronage upon
the Ministers, the railways ought to be taken into go-
vernment hands, and their stock consolidated into a
public debt. The French Provisional Government was
not so much mistaken when it felt that the public high-
ways ought to be in the hands of the public authorities,
and that the property which had been created by law,
and by law only, on the plea of public utility, might
quite justly, barring all pecuniary loss, be taken, arbi-
trarily repurchased, for the general good. If, in Eng-
land, we refrain from such a step, it must be simply
because the companies " bear their faculties
meekly." If they think to set up an " im-
perium in imperio," to amalgamate now by an
undue and tyrannous Parliamentary influence, to
increase that influence for all future occasions
by the amalgamation, then to heighten fares, curtail
opportunities, reduce accommodation at their pleasure,
the compact they may get from the Parliament, the
people will eventually break. The bad, corrupt bargain
will not stand. The spirit of England willrise against it, as
against the corn monopoly, and crush it, and oust them.
They would do better to spare themselves and us the trouble.
Even now their power is bitterly obnoxious. Put aside
such samples as that of a beggar oa horseback director
controlling the time of trains to the public danger, for
his own convenience of gossiping. Take the instance of
stopping Sunday trains in Scotland, made lately noto-
rious by the case of the Duchess of Sutherland, who
was thus prevented from attending the death-bed of her
father. It is the duty of Government to put down such
vagaries. The public communication of the empire is
not a matter for the direction or the choice of a com-
mittee of sectarian Pharisees. If they claim, as they
practically do, the only means of traffic, these must be
used as society chooses, not according to their anti-
Christian whims. And if Mammon is more worshipped
by English directions than the devil of spiritual pride
and intolerance, they will tax where the Scotch prohibit,
if we give them the power; and steam travelling, instead
of being the most important agent in unlettering and
advancing tke age, will be but the instrument of a new
tyranny, founded on a baseness to which the system of
corruption has rarely, if ever, produced an equal.
EXAMINER—The experiment of high and low fares
has been fully tried on railroads, and the failure of the
one and the success of the other completely demonstrated;
yet now that the great companies find their profits insuf-
ficient, their resource for improving them is, forsooth,
the departure from the system of low fares, which has
worked so well, and the return to the hie;h fares, con-
demned by experience. The answer for which we are
prepared is, " Oh, what are the companies to do ? They
must make a profit—they must improve the shareholders'
dividends." But the question still remains how they are
to effect this object by raising their fares, a step which
in every past instance has proved abortive. It does not
follow that because companies greatly want better profits
that better profits must come of high fares. The neces-
sities of companies will not alter the laws (as they may
be called) of travelling, amongst which is the proportion
of the number of passengers to the cheapness. Of
old, nature was said to abhor a vacuum ; but
with strict philosophy railway companies sould
hate a vacuum, abhor empty or scantily-filled
carriages, and such are the concomitants of high prices.
The expenses of every journey are the same, whether
the trains be full or half empty, and consequently the
best thrift is such a rate of fares as will best fill the
carriages by the cheapness tempting to excursions and
journeys which would not be thought worth while if the
price were higher. A very seasonable paper on the sub-
ject of the railway system appears in the 'Statistical
Journal, and adds ~to the many evidences in favour of
moderate or low fares. The writer concludes :—" The
railway system has doubled itself in the last three years.
Fares have been greatly reduced—the number of third-
class passengers, the majority of which arc of the work-
ing class, has largely increased. The importance and
value of the traffic in goods and cattle, which may be
much farther developed than it has been, has become
more apparent, relatively to the passenger traffic. The
number of trains is greater—the speed of some of those
trains has been accelerated, and all this has been effected
without any falling off in the average receipts on each
mile of railway in working, but with an increase proba-
bly sufficient or nearly so to meet the increase in the
working expenses attendant on the increased
accommodation now afforded." But all this
is at this very moment changed. Fares in-
stead of being reduced, are being raised, return tickets
discontinued, the number of trains diminished, the pub-
lic convenience in every respect curtailed or sacrificed
for the phantom of higher profits by higher fares. The
system of return tickets has proved as profitable as that
of moderate fares; indeed, it made part of the same
system; but because it has so succeeded it is to be abo-
,ished, and the double charge resorted to, probably upon
the calculation that a large portion of the public have
fixed their residences out of town, relying on the con-
venience of return tickets, and that they will not be able
to escape the new rule amercing them heavily. We be-
lieve that this expectation, and all expectations of the
same sort, will be disappointed, as the pubiic in such
cases defends itself by dropping into the next class.
The present Lord Yarborough, dissatisfied with an ex-
tortionate increase of the fares on a certain line, set the
example of travelling by the second class, declaring
that he should continue to do so till the first class
fare should be more fairly adjusted. This is the
only defence of the public against the screw. The
rise of fares should cause every class to betake
itself to the class of carriage below the one it has been
accustomed to use, the first class becoming second, the
second third, and the third Parliamentary. The rail-
roads are combining, and about to amalgamate; and the
public has to take eare of itself as best it may, and must
not omit any of the defences in its power against the
screw. It it had appeared in any one case that raising
fares had raised profits, there might be a disposition to
submit to an addition for the benefit of companies whose
properties are depressed; but the public fairly object to
a system increasing its charges without any reasonable
prospect of serving the interests concerned. It is expen-
sive to the one side, and worse than thriftless to the
other. Of this the companies may be sure, that if they
cannot obtain a profit from moderate fares, they will
incur loss from augmented ones, or else all
past experience is illusory. But something
must be done to arrest the depression of
railroad property, we shall be told. But because some

thing mist be done it does not follow thatthe wrohg
thing should be done, which, however, is the common
course in such cases of necessity, necessity being much
more frequently the mother of blunders than of inven-
tion. The companies are tampering with the sound part
of their systems to prop up the rotten. They hare many
disadvantages to bear up against, but putting the screw
on travellers will have a result the very opposite to pro-
viding a support. The remedy for depression is not to
be found in that quarter. The writer in the Statistical
Journal, Mr. W. Harding, points to the roots of the
evil in other quarters;—" Whatever falling off in divi-
vends there may have been is, therefore, hitherto to be
attributed, in a general view of the subject, to additions
to the trunk lines required in order to meet the in •
creased quantity of traffic consequent on the lowering
of the fares, to the capitalization of loans, and the
cr( ation of fictitious capital, principally by the purchase
of railways at premiums, and therefore at sums beyond
%hat they actually cost. These being profitable opera-
tions when shares were high, were pushed to such an
extent as now to press severely on the original share
capital of railway companies. The great evil of the last
three years is the extravagant outlay of money which
has taken place—an outlay which, instead of being
checked by the Legislature, has been encouraged to the
utmost by the mode of legislative inquiry adopted. This
has inflicted on the railway system a burden which it
will never be able to throw off, and which the public will
always have to submit to—a higher rate of charge for
conveyance than would, with common prudence, have
been necessary. It only remains to stop this extrava-
gance with a strong hand. The very existence of the
railway companies depends on the economy they can
practise in making and working their railways, and no-
shing which, on the face of it, involves increased outlay
—be it diversity of gauge and its consequence the mixed
gauge, or be it under the more plausible plea of compe-
tition—should be countenanced either by railway com-
panies or the Legislature, if we wish to secure for our-
selves the full fruits of that admirable invention which
England and the English enginneenrs
hwhoaveg
haveive
nto
followed
the
in the steps of George Stephenson
world."

SPECTATOR—As in a flood from the mountains,'
the trickling streams unite now at this point now at that.
until the branchinx waters finally join in
,a silver lace
over the whole plain, so the lines of railways have
branched out in all directions, until they have united
here and there; and now three of the great arteries are
about to join in one system. It seems probable that the
whole network will ultimately be one. What is already
in negotiation is likely to save much cross purpose and
waste of resources; as there wilt, at least within the re-
gion commanded by the three large western lines, be no
competing for identical districts with duplicate branches
for one traffic. There !Ain be economy of materials—of
Parliamentary expenses—of resources and outlay gene-
rally. A common. fear, that the public .will suffer froth.
the ceasing of competition, we have before shown to be
erroneous. The commodity which a railway company
offers to the public is governed by other laws than retail
traffic; or rather, from the vast scale of the operations
and the .sical4icii4V ••°Er
their working, the
o uf.chrto -goicein triiTo.
set forth sb clearly, that
self-interest dictates the proper course. The amount

[PRICE SD.

of the fares on a railway i 3 not determined by
the original cost : whatever the cost may have
been, the object of the company must be to extract
the largest amount of net revenue, and it is that object
which determines the rate of the charges to the public.
If fares were fixed too low, the expense of the working
stock would entail a loss, and at some season the public
would have to repay the temporary advantage by suffer-
ing diminished accommodation. If the fares were fixed
too high, the traffic would be checked and the revenue
would shrink. The point which steadily produces the
largest amount of net revenue is the point at which the
interests of the public and of the companies meet; in the
long run fares must settle at that point, and they will do
so the more readily for being undisturbed by competi-
tion. There is, indeed, one kind of reduction which is
apparently advantageous to a railway company but inju-
rious to the public—the reduction in the staff of servants
and in the rate of wages; which deteriorates the quality
of the service and diminishes its amount. We see signs of
such reduction in various quarters; but it is principally in
railways not included in the proposed amalgamation. This
kind of reduction is one not altogether, we fear, checked
by the interest of companies. Its worst result is personal
danger to passengers; but as the cost of accidents may
be reduced to an estimated average, it may be a question
whether a permament saving of wages may not present
a profit on the whole transaction, even allowing for the
pectiniary loss by accidents. We doubt whether it would
do so in the long run, because danger must tend to check
passenger traffic; but as the traffic has hitherto been
redundant in proportion to the travelling apparatus, com-
panies have not felt the full force of that screw. The evil,
however, is one that is not reachedby competition. In
the absence of competition, the usual regulator of coin
merciel operations, some, other- is wanted; and 490 so
none but official control by the Government of the
country. In spite of warnings that ought to exercise a
prospective judgment in a matter of such national im-
portance, the Government has suffered the railway
system to grow up haphazard, with a very culpable lack
of diligent attention; now, at this new stave of railway
development, will the Government revise the system, and
finally determine its own position?
RAILWAY .RECORD.—The all-important question
which now engrosses the thoughts of the majority of.
railway men, is the policy which has dictated the reso-
lution of " the three companies" to unite their desti-
nies for better, for worse. Minor discussions are nearly
forgotten in the interest of this absorbing subject. Our
daily contemporaries have taken it up with a warmth
which shows their perception of the interest taken by
the general public in the issue of this grand and unpa-
ralelled scheme of amalgamation. The Times, adhering
to its characteristic of jealousy—we will not say hosti-
lity—towards the railway companies, reads several long
homilies on the new conditions—meaning new conces-
sions, or new surrenders of pledged right and privilege
—which the Legislature, in its patriarchal care for the
" public" welfare, is, it seems, to require as the price of
its compliance with the application for a permissive
Act. We print, in another page, some of the lucubrae
tions put forth by our contemporaries on both sides of the
question, and will briefly observe that the hubbub of
" monopoly," &c., is just a sheer and simple absurdity,
and nothing more. There are already fixed maximums
of transit charge, • modetate enough, in all con-
science, especially when considered in reference to tra-
velling charges in the old times, and which, amalga-
mate or not amalgamate, the companies cannot exceed.
One might imagine, from the tone assumed by certain
influential writers, that railway companies have no legal
hindrance to making any charge they please—that there
are no such things as maximums—and that an amalgama-
tion of the western companies, a " monopoly" of the
western traffic—would at once (in the absence of new
and special Parliamentary checks) be the signal for the
commencement of extravagant fares. That. Parliamen-
tary checks, ample, and only too much more than ample,
exist already, is a fact which " dashing" leader writers
find it convenient to overlook ; and thus we hear the
bubble about the profits of the monopoly of the western
traffic bAng " optional," " indefinite," " as much as the
fortunate owners choose to extract out of it," &c. Such
nonsense is gravely uttered by gentlemen holding the
rank of prominent public instructors I The real difficulty
in considering the propriety of asking for powers of
amalgamation lies not in any danger to " public" conve-
nience which the measure could possibly involve, but in
the questionavhether so sweeping' and revolutionary a step
—such a departure from the plans of independent policy
upon which railways have hitherto beenmanaged, is indis-
pensable to the object of removing certain evils that
have hitherto worked with terrific effect against the
welfare of shareholders—we may add, against the wel-
fare of the " public "—but which evils, we have often
asserted, and still unhesitatingly maintain, existed not
in sympathy with, but in perfect antagonism to, the ge-
neral principles and tendency of the railway system as
it has hitherto been developed under the administration
of separately responsible corporations. In our own de-
cided opinion, all the mischiefs of mutual hostility and
mistaken competition—of reciprocal opposition, Parlia-
mentary. contention, financial prodigality, degrading
scandal, which have been so sadly prominent in the
Course of the struggle between the establishments that
are seeking to effect a complete Act of Amalgamation—
might be put an end to without incurring the labour, the
expense, and, haply, the risk involved in the prosecution
of what we must again call so revolutionary an object.
We do not think that, from this time forth—if we may
tike it for granted that all parties are quite awake to the
grievous error involved in the hostilities of past times—
true harmony of action and object will be quite as pro-
bable and attainable without amalgamation as with it.
The incessant attention we have paid, through a
series of years to the affairs of the establishments
whose position is the subject of comment, and the know-
ledge and experience we have acquired in that time,
combine to convince us that all the main objects that
can be hoped for through " amalgamation" may be se-
cured by a much more easy process, without resorting to
what some will consider an anomalous and inconsistent
proceeding—a proceeding which, we feel strongly, is at
least an unnecessary one. The best objects of amalga-
mation can be achieved more easily, if not more safely,
on the understanding of an honourable and friendly in-
dependence„of which, however, it will be an essential
consideration that charity, cordiality, and the desire to
work out in concert all measures of common good, are
substituted for anything of private jealousy, pique, and
pride, whicb, it has been said, wag at one time permitted
to wield a sinister influence over the interests of proprie-
taries. The adjustment of relative terms, in completing
the treaty of amalgamation, would, of course, form one
of the most critical and delicate duties of the able gen-
tlemen by whom the negotiations may be conducted.
But there are difficulties besides this; there is
the Legislature to be dealt with; there is the change
and sacrifice of many arrangements which have been
matured by separate companies for their separate conve-
nience, at great outlay of labour, time, and money, and
which would become useless to an " amalgamated con-
cern. But it is unpleasant to anticipate these accumu-
lations of difficulty. The great point for consideration
is—" Is the proposed measure one of necessity—one of
vital necessity—to the welfare of the companies ?Is it
impossible that relations of peace, good-will, and friendly
co-operation can be established without it ?" If these
propositions cannot be fixed positively in the affirmative,
it may be argued, with much efficacy, that a policy pre-
ferable to amalgamation is open to the companies. But
there is one grand alternative on which we cannot fear
that railway managers will forsake their character as
men of honour, fortitude, and integrity. Messrs. Glyn,
Chaplin, Russell, and their colleagues, ventured on a
great step when they determined on initiating a movement
towards amalgamation. Now, we respect and appre-
ciate these gentlemen's merited reputation; and we must,
therefore, feel safe in answering for them that, under
no conceivable contingency that can arise, would they
be induced to barter, for the contemplated " Per-
missive Act," any one iota of the rights of pro-
prietors to the personal management 'of their own pro-
perty. We feet safe in undertaking the assertion, that
the managers of the three great companies would turn
with scorn from the proposal to bind their constituents

hand and foot, and to lay them prostrate and helpless
before that "official" power which has so often exhibited
its bungling incompetency to meddle with railway affairs
ionrfatmoyt7heitpuibslie.
not to b
From
doubted the honourable men in question would recoil
with disgust. Well they can distinguish the treachery
sbueenhefihcivamllyilitaotio then humiliation—from
mpsaunciehs
of any overtures which, under the cloak of nominal in-
dependence, would make railway property a mere foot-
ball to afford pastime for official whim. Well they know
how to clothe their language in the terms best befiiting
the rejection of so insulting a proposal ; and well they
must know how withering would be the indignation of
intelligent and properly awakened gatherings of pro-
prietors when the base compact was submitted for their
acceptance ! Let railway men fear not; let them think,
and be ready to act. Official journalists may menace and
bluster, but the railway proprietor knows he has gua-
ranteed rights—that he has British law and faith to pro-
tect those rights, and that while he is true to himself,
neither the bluster, nor the menace, can deprive him of
them.

NOVEL NECK TlE.—Nunterous attempts have been
made of late 3 e,rs, without success, amongst our in-
genious warehousemen to provide a loose cAlar for the
shirt, \Odell should supersede the necessity of tapes,
which are not only liable to rapid decay, arising from
the starch, but, from thi is non-elastic character, press
tighly, and therefore injuriously, if not fatally,. On the
vital vessels of the neck. A plan devised by Mr. DaVid
Hesse, of Manchester, meets these ,requirements,
which by a simple and facile plin allows of the collar
itself being arr.inged with accuracy to the stock, thus
insuring a correct f 1 without any pressure or extra
trouble. The combination neck tye, which as registered
accordinv to the Act, possesses ether obvious advantages.
THE TwoIMPEDIMENTS.—it is said a handsome
young Yankee peolar made love to a laiNum widow in
l'onnsylve.nia. lie accempanioi Isis dec:aration with an
allusion t) two intpe;;imillts to their union. Name

them," said the widow. " The want of means to setup
a retail: store." They parted, and the widow sent the
pedlar a cheque for ample ►neans. W hen they met again
the pedlar had hired and stocked his store, and the smil-
ing fair one begged to know the other impediment.. " I
havc another wife," cried the notion-dealer. •
,DiviartaaTtoN.-”,-There are lying-books aS.well
ink; words, dissembling smiles, deceiving signs, and even
a lying silence.