The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

284 LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL. [1855-9
one company becomes possessed of the line of another;
lastly, that Government should not attempt to work the
railways itself, but lease them to companies or individuals
on such conditions as would most tend to public
benefit. These views will be found expressed in my
separate Report (for I did not succeed in bringing over
my brother Commissioners to my opinion) at pp. cxii.
and cxxvi.*
Limerick also
Mr. Monsell, M.P. for the county of
made a separate report concurring in
great measure with my own. It is foreign to the purpose
of this narrative to dwell on the general ad-
vantages that might be expected to follow the great
change in question ;
suffice it to repeat that, if effected,
it would put it in the power of the Government to
secure to the Post Office the prompt and unimpeded
command of all railway facilities, and that on terms
at once equitable in themselves and beneficial to all
parties.
Arbitration with Railway Companies.
In the absence of those fixed rules which legislation
alone can establish, frequent recourse is necessarily
had to arbitration ; which, however, is unsatisfactory
in its results, owing, no doubt, chiefly to the difficulty
of procuring an umpire at once sufficiently conversant
with the facts and principles that should form the basis
of judgment, sufficiently unbiassed to deal with them
dispassionately, and at the same time acceptable to the
railway companies. In cases of difference between in-
dividuals and large companies, the public feeling, as
shown by the decision of juries and otherwise, is for
the most part unduly favourable towards individuals ;
and, in like manner, in cases between companies and
* " Royal Commission on Railways. Report of the Commissioners, 1867."