The immense progress made by England since 1846, as compared with the progress of France or of Germany, is often attributed _solely_ to Free Trade immense progress

I believe Free Trade has done much for us: but I am sure that our railway superiority (to France, Germany, etc.) has done much also. railway superiority

But the usual remark about the French railways is, "See how much better they manage these things in France. While our railway companies are all spending their money in fighting and in competition, and pay dividends of 4 or 5 per cent, the French railways have their routes settled by Government engineers, and pay 8 or 10 per cent." I am going to propose a plan for stopping all company fighting in England for ever: but--as to the dividend--it can only mean that, like any other Government monopoly, the French public are being made to pay more for travelling than they need.

As regards the interest of the public, the rate of dividend paid by a great railway company is of very small importance. For many years the South-Western Company paid double the dividend the Great Western did. How did this affect the work each did for the public--the conveyance of passengers and goods? Many common highways have been made by parishes and landowners combined for the public convenience;

the capital so laid out paid no direct interest (the road was a highway, not a turnpike): how does this case differ from a railway that pays no dividend on the original stock? If the railway carried me from Exeter to London in five hours for thirteen shillings, what does it matter to me whether the company pays 2-1/2 per cent or 6-1/2 per cent to its original shareholders? In a very few small and special cases we have seen a railway line not pay for the working, and be closed. In a few other cases, where the dividend paid is less than 4-1/2 per cent, it is possible that the utility of the line to the public is less than the loss of the shareholders in a non-paying investment.

I say this is a possible and conceivable case--in some very short lines or in some very thinly inhabited districts. Such cases I believe rare. Not rarely the initial cost of the line has been seriously increased by promotion, legal and parliamentary expenses, enormous sums extorted for land, severance, etc.; if these expenses can be done away with, these cases of railways constructed at a loss _on the whole_ to the nation may be made fewer still.

The way in which the railway monopoly, the monopoly of the great companies, has grown up is noteworthy. To enable a company to take the land of a private man compulsorily a private Act of Parliament was necessary. The Parliamentary Committees then said, We will not enable you to dispossess forcibly private owners of their land for "a public purpose" unless you further shew that this includes a public advantage. Private owners were of course let in to show cause against a new railway; they always talked like Naboth (the Parliamentary Committees must have been wearied by the continual references to Naboth), but the genuine private owners sold themselves at the last minute; after they had pushed the company up to the highest bid, they well knew that this was above what they could get in the after arbitration, and "closed," withdrawing their opposition the last day in the Committee room.

The opposition company, besides the grounds of insufficient need for a new line, etc., always supports and comforts the opposing landowners: but the great resource of the opposing company is to hire a landowner to oppose, especially a local attorney or agent who owns land proposed to be taken by the new line. Such an attorney, employed professionally by the opposing company, cannot be bought off at any price; he is a real Naboth, and in his character of a dispossessed landowner he will fight for the company every point that they cannot decently fight for themselves.

Opposing a railway bill in Parliament has thus become an art; so much so, that no independent small line can be made unless they can get the support of one (at least) of the great companies that are supposed to occupy the area. The lines made (economically often) by the great companies themselves are not primarily designed for the accommodation of the public, but for the private purposes of the great company; sometimes they are made merely to diddle another great company.

It is well to compare the law regarding making a new railway with that for making a new main-drain in the fens. In the latter case the new drain company receives extraordinary powers and may put a rate on the land benefited. In the case of a railway passing through a farm, the common estimate is that it adds a shilling an acre value to the rent of the farm; if there is a station on the farm it often adds much more to the agricultural value.

Landlords are up to this: a landlord triumphantly told me, "I got L7000 from that company for cutting me up; but I would have given them L14,000 to cut me up more." (In this case, however, building value came in.) But the disgraceful squabbling of companies, who "sell" any owner without scruple when they come to terms among themselves, has disgusted landlords from actively supporting railway schemes.

A great deal of the opposition between rival companies has been from their point of view an error, as they have subsequently discovered for themselves. When the Great Western Company first opened their station at Basingstoke there was war between them and the South-Western, who thought all their London West-End passengers would transfer themselves to the Great Western at Basingstoke in order to avoid a cab drive from Waterloo to Paddington.

Some passengers do so transfer themselves. But _via_ Basingstoke a fine trade sprang up between the south of England and the Oxford and Leamington route, which far more than compensated the South-Western Company for the London passengers they lost at Basingstoke. So in a very few years there was peace at Basingstoke, and a through-carriage daily from Birkenhead to Southampton. I think it is impossible to estimate how much one railway company profits by the facilities afforded by all the surrounding companies. The loss at a limited number of competing termini is seen; the gain in the local and cross-country traffic is not.