The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-11-27 00:00:00

re-election for one year at least. Let it lie imperative on th

Audit Board to employ a known accountant Of character and
ability, who should not be allowed to be a shareholder, to zo
through and certify the accounts, before they are periodically
subtnitt•dl to the shareholders. Let this accountant attend the

ornce or me company as orten as may be deemed needful in
the course of every half-year, so as to male the audit complete
and searching."

,Now, it is perfectly true that shareholders may institute
amongst themselves a proper audit, " if they choose"—

there is, by-the-by, a great (
deeply interested in detecting improper expendfture in
their railways as they are in their domestic or their mer-

leal in t

hey are as

cantile affairs. But we have seen that the system of pri-
vate audit has not been effective heretofore ; and there
are many reasons to be urged why shareholders, however
honourable, should not be altogether relied upon in this
matter. The public, who are buyers of railway property,
object to receive the statements, upon which they base
their calculations as to its value, from those who have
such property to sell. We have rarely seen shareholders
objecting to receive the largest possible dividends. Men
who may be large proprietors to day, and totally void of
any stake in such concerns to-morrow, are not the most
likely persons to disclose the full amount of nnsatisfac-

tory experience of their working, or to insist upon a
sufficient reserve fund being retained to meet possible
contingencies.

We -pass, however, from this question to one in which-
the plblic is still more deeply interested. Mr. Langton
proposes to increase the value of railway property by
raiQing the present parliamentary tariff of fares, which
railway companies, he says, submitted to under wrong
itnptwsions as to the amount of prosperity to be realised
by such concerns. The legislature, he contends, have no
more right to interfere in fixing arbitrarily the fares of
railways than they would have had in determining the
fares to be charged by the coach proprietors and carriers,
whom these companies superseded. There is, however,
the public will think, a very striking difference between
the cases. The legislature has given to these companies
a virtual monopoly of the traffic of the country. If coach
proprietors or carriers upan common roads overcharged
the public, competition at once sprung up. Other coach
and carrying concerns immediately offered themselves.
But there is no such ready mode of repressing the exac-
tions of railway companies. Tllis can only be done by
the establishment of rival companies ; and we question
much whether the present maximum of charze insisted
upon by parliament will not operate to preventcompeti-
_

tion, by additional railway formation, reproducing in
every direction the injurious results of which some com-
panies in our own immediate neighbourhood are just now
comnlaining. Besides, companies having made a bargain
with the public to grant certain facilities for travelling as
one of the conditions upon which their great and often
arbitrary powers were granted, come with a bad grace to
ask for an increase of the value of their property at the
public expense. We should be glad to see the railways of
Great Britain paying better than at present, and by good
and economical management they will certainly be made
to do so ; but we decline most decidedly to subscribe to
make up any loss which they may have sustained by
erroneous calculations made during a period of inflated
prosperity, as we are certain that, had the error been on
the other side, we should not have participated in the
extra profit realised.

*What must be done
.for Railways ? Question considered
and anAwered. By H. C. Langton. London : J. Richardson,
Cornhill. Liverpool : Willmer and Smith. Manchester : B.
Wheeler.