CHAPTER XIII.

RAILWAY PROGRESS AND RAILWAY LEGISLATION.

First Act of Parliament authorising the Construction of a Railway— Railway Developement from the Year 1801 to 1846 inclusive-The Railway Mania of 1825-26 - The Railway Mania of 1836-37 — The Railway Mania of 1845-46-Difference between the Crises of 1825-26 and 1836-37 and of 1845-46- Report from Committees, 1837-Bubble Companies-Parliamentary Influence-Parliamentary Corruption Compensation; Stories of The Parliamentary Committee as a Tribunal - Robert Stephenson's Views on Parliamentary Legislation - Observations on his Project for a 'Preliminary Board of Inquiry' Causes of Parliamentary Inconsistency-Stories of the Parliamentary Bar-Professional Witnesses in the House of Commons: Robert Stephenson, Brunel, Locke, Lardner, Bidder — Great Britain compared with other Countries in respect of Railway Developement-Results-Proposal for Railway Farmers-Proposal for a Railway Bank.

RAILY

AILWAY organisation, like most important commercial systems, was an affair of small commencement; and to this fact can be traced the principal defects and errors of railway legislation. The early tramways were private works, undertaken at the sole cost, and carried out for the benefit of private traders who for generations bought way leave' of landed proprietors, and occasionally made arrangements of cooperation with the owners of adjacent roads without seeking parliamentary sanction. It was not till the middle of the last century that the legislature was first solicited to authorise the construction of a railroad, and so received a

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first instalment of that business which, during the last forty years, has swelled to a prodigious bulk. A private act of the 31st Geo. II. (1758) has reference to the road used for coal carriage to Leeds, on which Blenkinsop's patent locomotives used to run, with toothed drivingwheels working on a rack-rail. Clauses are also found in many of the early canal acts, empowering the proprietors of the canals to construct railways in connection with their water ways. The first year of the present century, however, saw the railway instituted in this country as a means of public convenience. In 1801 the Surrey Iron Railway Company was incorporated, with power to construct an iron tramway for public use. A survey of the following table will show the course taken by railway enterprise, until it became one of the greatest and most complicated of existing commercial interests:

This table is a concise epitome of the history of railway enterprise during the forty years to which it refers. The first twenty-four years saw exactly the same number of acts passed. In 1825, however, a sudden start was made in consequence of the growing confidence in the Stockton and Darlington line. In the following year, when the success of that undertaking had been ascertained, the number of bills for new lines was ten. The commercial trouble of 1826 reduced the number of bills passed in the following session to one. In 1828, however, a fresh start was made, and steadily maintained till 1836, when

the first great railway mania reached its height, and gave the public in the course of the session no less than twenty-nine new bills. In 1837 the first great mania began to subside, just as the works of the London and Birmingham line (to which the mania was in a great measure due) were on the eve of completion, and the passion for railway speculation was for a time so much suppressed, that the years 1838 and 1839 saw only five bills for new lines passed, and the year 1840 did not see even one. The lull, however, was only the precursor of a storm, the fury and ruin of which made the madness and misery of the railway mania of 1836 sink into insignificance. Robert Stephenson's London and Birmingham line had familiarised the London public with railways, and its success was a constant witness in support of those ambitious speculators who are always eager in exhorting the industrious and thrifty to find for their savings a better investment than the public securities. In 1841 an attempt was made to set the ball rolling once more, and a bill was granted for the construction of the Hertford and Ware branch; but so little was the country as yet in humour to renew the ruinous game of 1836, that even this little branch, five miles and three quarters in length, was not constructed. The session of 1842 saw the advent of George Hudson to London, and bills passed for the Newcastle and Darlington line (about which it will be necessary to speak more fully hereafter) and a few branch lines. The depression still continued. The parliamentary year of 1843 saw little that was new in the way of railway projection. But in the next session the floodgates were opened, and the deluge commenced which in three short years enriched rogues, beggared

honest men, swept away the savings of sober industry, and reduced countless families to destitution. In 1844 bills were granted for the construction of forty-eight new lines, extending over 700 miles, at an estimated expenditure of £14,793,994. The allowance for 1845 was 120 new lines, measuring 2,883 miles, at a computed cost of £43,844,907. In the following year (1846) legislative liberality went so far as to authorise the expenditure of £121,500,000, on two hundred and seventy-two new lines, covering four thousand seven hundred and ninety miles. In all, the amount of the national wealth assigned in these three sessions of Parliament to railway enterprise was one hundred and eighty millions, one hundred and thirty-eight thousand, nine hundred and one pounds.

So long as applications for new lines were few, a parliamentary committee was the best possible tribunal for deciding on the propriety of investing private individuals with power to construct the required lines. From 1801 to 1824 inclusive, Parliament (as has been seen) granted only one bill per annum. Whilst the concession of one act a year for the construction of a small road for the convenience of local commerce was enough to satisfy the public demand for railways, there were no grounds for suspecting that assemblies, which had already considered the claims of canal-owners and projectors of public roads and bridges, would be found. incompetent to decide with wisdom and equity on cases connected with the creation of public tramways. Now and then the projectors of an iron road between a nest of collieries and a neighbouring port might possibly be defeated in their application to Parliament, through the