The life of George Stephenson, railway engineer - Lighthouse ...

468 KAILWAY SYSTEM AND ITS EflSULTS.
and eighty-six different Acts ! Of
in the present reign.
these the greater part were passed
But it is not so much the number of the statutes regarding railways,
that excites surprise. The extraordinary feature of the Parliamentary
legislation and practice consists in the anomalies, incongruities, irre-
concilabilities, and absurdities which pervade this mass of legislation.
A Commission was appointed a few years since for the consolidation
of the Statute Law. If ever that Commission should have to deal
with Railway Law it will indeed find itself in a dilemma. It will find,
that the legislation for railways, both in principle and in detail, is
and that the only way of escaping the difficul-
utterly irreconcilable ;
ties of the position would be to sweep the whole from the statute-book
and legislate afresh.
i^ot only is the legislation irreconcilable, but throughout the quar-
ter of a century during which attention has been given to this branch
of legislation, the Acts of the Parliament have been wholly at variance
with its own principles. To illustrate this : Several different Select
Committees have, at various times, deliberately reported against the
possibility of maintaining competition between railways, and to this
principle Parliament has as often assented. Yet the practical operation
of the laws, which have received legislative sanction, has been
throughout and at the same time directly to negative this principle, '
by almost invariably allowing competition to be obtained, wherever
it has been sought ! Parliament, therefore, has been adding to the
capital of Railway Companies, whilst it has been sanctioning measures
to subdivide the trafiic. The decline of dividends was an inevitable
consequence.
Again : In 1836, the House of Commons required its Committees
upon Railway Bills specially to report as to the probability of railways
paying. This principle has, however, been gradually departed from,
until such inquiry is now considered and treated as utterly unimpor-
tant. Legislative sanction having been given to a line, it might be
supposed that Parliament would also grant adequate protection, exact-
ing from the railway certain public facilities and advantages, in return
for the rights afforded to it. But, instead of doing this, the practice
has been precisely the reverse. Whilst the Legislature and the Government
have exacted facilities and advantages, even beyond what
they had a fair right to demand, so far from protecting the interests of
those to whom they conceded the right of making the line, they have
allowed—nay, they have encouraged—every description of competition
! What has been the result ? As regards the completeness and
perfectness of the line first made, obviously it must hayp bepn most