€0 Transactio7is. — Miscellaneous. 



having the necessary powers conferred on them by Acts of Par- 

 hament, and thus the railways of the country became private 

 property, and the carrying business a large monopoly. It is 

 true that the traffic is divided among many companies, but, so 

 far as the people at large are concerned, the railway system is 

 a real and irresistible monopoly, having enormous power, which 

 has often been exercised to the serious injury of local interests. 

 There is every reason to believe that this was, in the nature of 

 things, at first quite unavoidable, and therefore is not to be 

 regarded as a just occasion of blame to those courageous men 

 by whose energy and ability, and at whose cost, the great ad- 

 vantages of safe and rapid transit were provided. The idea 

 ■of a railway was new to the w^orld. It could not be put to 

 the test of practical experience without, a large expenditure. 

 It was never for a moment supposed to be within the sphere 

 of a political government to carry out ; there was therefore 

 no alternative but to do it by private means. All that the 

 governing power of the nation, represented by Parliament, 

 appears to have thought it had to do was to exercise a sort of 

 arbitrary control over what the engineers proposed. And in 

 many instances this was so done as to cause an enormous and 

 wholly unnecessary expenditure in parliamentary costs before 

 a shilling could be expended in the actual making of the line. 

 Thus it came to pass that the idea of private property in a 

 railway was quite natural ; and the consequent idea that 

 every railway was to be looked upon as a concern where- 

 with to provide dividends for the owners was also per- 

 fectly natural. Of course, when we came to these new 

 lands as immigrants we brought these old ideas with 

 us, and it is not to be wondered at that they have 

 proved of sufficient force to keep us from seeing how en- 

 tirely inapplicable they are to any country in wdiich rail- 

 ways are, as they ought always to be, the property of the 

 people. By slow degrees a truer view of the function of rail- 

 ways has been perceived, and it is more and more recognised 

 that, in this country at least, railways are and must ever 

 be the chief highways of traffic, and therefore should be, like 

 all other highways, free to all who require to use them. Free 

 highways should ever be found in the country of a free people. 

 What do the words "free highways" mean? They mean 

 that the person who uses the highway should not have to pay 

 toll every time he uses it ; that no one should be able to say 

 to us, " Before you walk or ride or drive or carry your goods 

 on this road you must pay toll." Now, all this is quite plain 

 and easy to understand when applied to an ordinary road in 

 the country, or to a street or lane in a town ; but how does it 

 apply to a railway ? I think it is not difficult to make it 

 plain. When any one uses an ordinary road, he either walks 



