The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-03-24 00:00:00

•: a Ss ~.

.r4.k,5.i0..a

t.\\
: C"\Q%-..(:•\.:a

gay Eiberpool gptanDarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 24, 1846.

The debate on Thursday night, upon the motion
of Mr. Morrison, for the appointment of a special
committee 64 to enquire whether, without discourag-
ing legitimate enterprise, conditions might not be
embodied in railway acts better fitted than those
hitherto inserted in them to promote and secure the
interests of the public," affords convincing proof
of the necessity of some prompt and vigourous
steps being taken to protect the public from the
effects of a needless and unprofitable multiplication
of railway projects, on the one hand, and, on the
other, the erection of monopolies dangerous and op-
pressive to the public. Without committing our-
selves to an approval of the understood opinions of
the hon. member upon the course to he pursued;
without entering at all into the question whether
the reversion of all railways, hereafter to be sanc-
tioned by Parliament, should be secured to the
country ; it is clear, from the tone of the whole
debate, that the railway interest is rapidly gaining a
degree of power which will shortly render it as dif-
ficult to be grappled with by the legislature as it has
already been found difficult to grapple with the
landed, the commercial, or any other of the great
interests of the country. We have neglected, in the
infancy of the system, to take proper securities for
the public safety and convenience ; and when the
infant shall have assumed the gigantic proportions,
of which it is so rapidly giving indications, we shall
find that it will possess a sort of " noli me tangere"
influence, which the legislature will find itself power-
less to strive against.
The arguments of Mr. Mangles and others, op-
posing legislative interference with railway property,
on the ground that, if there have been great prizes
drawn hitherto, there have been blanks which re-
duce the average interest of the capital invested to a
fair rate of profit, have a reasonable sound with
them. It appears equitable enough, in ordinary
kinds of speculative enterprise, that good judgment
and prudent management should be remunerated,
so long as their opposites entail upon projectors
ruinous losses ; and hence we have got into a habit
of regarding legislative interference to check such
enterprize, as uncalled for and even unjust. We
should bear in mind, however, that railway pro-
perty is in its nature monopolizing. If from want
of judgment, or too great expenditure in its plan, or
its working, it is not a profitable property, it pre-
vents, nevertheless, the adoption of a better planned
and better worked project. The legislature will
hesitate, and even private enterprize will pause,
before entering upon the formation of a cheap and
efficient line through a country in which a dear and
inefficient line has already been formed. On the
other hand, the want of such a cheap and efficient
line may be severely felt. Between the termini
A and B, for instance, a line may have been formed
costing the extreme price of railway formation—say
£50,000 per mile—which renders it absolutely ne-
cessary for the remuneration of the proprietors, that
a high rate of fares should be charged; and al-
though it may be impossible that two lines can co-
exist between the same localities, it is manifestly
cruel towards the population of these localities that
they should be taxed for the blunders or the ex-
travagance of the projectors of the original line.
The question as affects interference with railways is
clearly out of the ordinary category of legislative in-
terference with the application of capital to every-
day business or enterprize. We first sanction an
injudicious undertaking ; and, by depriving a judi-
cious one of all prospect of fair remuneration, we
entail upon the country, in exorbitant rates, the
penalty of our want of legislative foresight and good
judgment.
We cannot, moreover, be told by the proprietors
of such railways that we have the option of using
them or not. It cannot be said—" We have given
you, at a too costly rate, it is true, an improved
mode of conveyance between the points which we
connect ; but we do not compel you to use it." The
fact is indisputable that, comparatively inefficient or
dear as such railways may be, we are compelled to
use them ; for they are still so far an improvement
as to have driven long ago the old conveyances off
the road. We cannot now post it to London or to
Newcastle, if even we were disposed to resort to that
costly mode of travelling. There are no relays of
well-fed and well-trained horses now on the road—
scarcely a post-chaise in a condition to travel. The
once bustling inns are fallen into dilapidation, or
are converted to other purposes. The whole race
of drivers, guards, postillions, and ostlers, belong
now as completely to a past age as the relics which
we preserve in our museums. We are thus as in-
explicably bound to the rail as Ixion to his wheel.
The monopoly is almost complete.
The task which Mr. Morison proposes for his
committee will be a difficult one; and we greatly
fear that it will not lead to any very useful result, if
its inquiries be restricted, as prescribed by the terms
of his motion, or by the evident animus displayed
by several of the members, whose remarks upon
tle subject are before us. It may appear presump-
tulus in us to offer any suggestions for its guidance
in 'a practical direction. Located, however, as we
are in a town and district, which may well be called
the centre of railway enterprise, and having had
many opportunities of watching the working of the
present system, we willingly risk the imputation of
presumption, in the hope that some portion of our
remarks may be found useful.
We have already thrown overboard the notion
that railway investments ought to be held sacred
from Legislative interference, direct or otherwise.
'We believe that even existing railways might, with
greater safety, submit to an authoritative restriction
of their rates of tolls and their general regulations,
than incur the risk of having such restriction forced
upon them by competition from new railways.
There is an evident elasticity in this description of
property—a creativeness of traffic and profit—be-
yond that found in ordinary business undertakings,
and which is daily proving that judicious conces-
sions to the public convenience are ultimately a
source of gain rather than a sacrifice on the part of
the companies. New feeders are continually falling
into the trunk lines. Fresh sources of mineral and
other traffic are being optned up by them. Their
original exorbitant expense of working and manage-
ment are being diminished by judicious amalgama-
tion and centralization of direction ; and from all
these circumstances we deduce the conclusion that,
as their most efficacious protection from the invasion
of new and comparatively uncalled-for schemes,
railway companies, whether existing or only pro-
jected, may advantageously submit to some reason-
able measure of control on the part of the Legisla-
ture, acting in behalf of the public.
We are the more impelled to this conclusion by
the extent to which the principle of amalgamation
and leasing of lines is being carried on—a principle
which promises ultimately to place the great railway
thoroughfares of the kingdom in the hands of a few
giant companies, whilst it threatens to isolate com-
pletely many valuable lines, which, if permitted a
fair chance, would be remunerative to their pro-
prietors and useful to the public. There must he
some power erected to control the formation of these
monopolies. The Legislature professes, when ex-
amining into the merits of this or that new railway
scheme, to be guided, in part, in its determination
by the fact that it confers on the district through
which it runs greater cheapness or convenience than
is conferred by the existing line. Of what avail,
however, is this principle, when we know that as
soon as ever such new line developes its public use-
fulness, and lops off a branch from the old mono-
poly, it is bought up and merged in the concern
against whose exactions it was to have served as a
protection?
And here, in our humble judgment, we come to
the most useful portion of the enquiry to which the
Committee of Mr. Morison can direct its attention—
" How can we best protect the public from the
growth of dangerous monopolies, on the one hand,
and on the other, from such a multiplication of new
projects as that from the effects of which we arenow
suffering." We would suggest that both these ob-
jects might be secured by the exercise of a more
strict surveillance by Parliament over the terms upon
which such amalgamations are forme4. We believe
firmly that three-fourths of the schemes which are
now before Parliament and the public, would never
have been projected but for an expectation on the
part of the projectors that they would either be
bought out of the field by rival projects, or taken
up by one or other, or by a combination, of the
great companies, a portion of whose traffic they
threaten to extract. Others have been brought for-
ward solely in the hope of profiting by some break.
down of a rival under the ordeal of our absurdly
complicated standing orders. A revision of these,
so as at least to render them more intelligiblu—
more the te:t of bona fide honesty, and less the in-