§ Railway Accidents. (January, 
limits of certain prescribed rates, for various classes of goods. 
In the Act for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, passed 
in the year 1825, and in other subsequent similar Acts, a 
further provision was introduced, that if the dividends should 
exceed 10 per cent an abatement should be made from the 
maximum tonnage rates of 5 per cent on the amount thereof 
for each I per cent, which the Company might divide over 
and above a dividend of Io per cent on its capital. In their 
capacity as owners of a road, railway companies were not 
intended by Parliament to have any monopoly or preferen- 
tial use of the means of communication on their lines of 
railway; on the contrary, provision was made, in all or 
‘most of the Acts of Incorporation, to enable all persons to 
use the road on payment of certain tolls to the company, 
under such regulations as the company might make to 
secure the proper and convenient use of the railway. But 
no sooner were railways worked on a large scale with loco- 
motive power than it was found impracticable for the public 
in general to use the lines, either with carriages or loco- 
motive engines; and the railway companies, in order to 
make their undertakings remunerative, were compelled, 
with the assistance of the persons who had been previously 
engaged in the carrying trade of the country, to embark in 
the business of common carriers on their lines of railway, 
and conduct the whole operations themselves. 
In consequence of the increasing number of Railway Bills 
annually coming before Parliament, and the necessity for 
securing consistency in private bill legislation, the House of 
Commons, in 1837, appointed a select committee, to which 
were referred all petitions for private bills, and it was the 
duty of this committee to decide how far the standing orders 
had been complied with in each case. 
In 1840, another Select Committee of the House of 
Commons, appointed to report on the railway system, came 
to the conclusion that the right secured to the public by 
the Railway Acts, of running their engines and carriages on 
the railways, was practically a dead letter. In consequence 
of their recommendation that the executive government 
should be entrusted with the duty of inspecting new lines 
of railway, and of exercising a general supervision over the 
manner in which the railway companies used their powers, 
an Act was passed by which it was provided that no new 
railway for the conveyance of goods or passengers should be 
opened without previous notice to the Board of Trade, and 
the Board were empowered to appoint officers to inspect all 
new railways. The Board was also empowered to require, 
