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354 r3IETl(ORS OF SOCfAL REFORM.
differs only in degree from that of letters and packets : as to
the business of tho State, it is evidently as lawful to do one ns
to do the other” (p. 2-48}. He says again : 6r I conceive it
possible that aomo day passengers and goods may trnvel by
railway, as letters and parcels do by post, at ono uniform rate
-the samu whether they be going thirty miles or three
hundred ” (p. 254). Mr. Gnlt, in the preface to his prolix
work upon ‘r Railway Iteforrn,” publislmd in 186.5, describes
the rcvults of Sir Romland Hill’s postal scheme, and then
asserts diut.inctly : (( Tlw same principles applied wit,h equal
force to tllc couvcynllcc of passengers and goods by railway,
ns to the conveyance of letters by mail-coach ” (p. xviii.).
111 his rcccwt paper, printed in The J‘orfnigAtZy Review for
Novcmbcr, 110 repcats the same notions : No better illustration
could bo given of the result that might be anticipated
from u rcduction in passenger-fares than what our experience
affords us during tho last thirty years by the reform of our
Post Office, and the reductions effected in custom and excise
duties. The cases are in every respect analogous” (p. 576).
Exactly similar ideas pervade the paper of Mr. Biddulph
Martin, rend Leforo tho Statistical Societ’y in June last., as
wcll ns tllu speccllcs of his supporters in the important discussion
which fullowed. Evcn so profound and experienced
a statisticirm 11s the pwsidcllt, Dr. Fur, was misled, as I
think, into asserting that “ the railway system may, like the
Post Office, put every station in easy communication with
every other station; und some futurc Romland Hill may
persuade Parliutnent to do for fares on the State railways what
it has dorm for the postage of letters.”
I need hardly stay to demonstrate that €acts are valueless
nnloss connected rand explained by it correct theory; that
analogies are very dangerous grounds of inference, unless
carefully founded on similar conditions ; and that experience
misleads if it be misinterpreted. It is the party advocating
State management who indulge in argument, theory, .and
speculation; and it is my purpose in this Essay to show that
their arguments are unsound, their theories false, and their
speculations chimerioal. They misinterpret experience, they