450 . THE GROUNDSWELL. - 



and disposition of resources within reach. What more 

 effectual method of rendering railroad enactments inopera 

 tive could be adopted than to intrust their interpretation 

 to men who scorn the idea of understanding the system they 

 are to control ? Why burlesque and belittle education so 

 much as to commit our leading industry into the keeping 

 of men whose popular qualification therefor is that they 

 know nothing practically about it? The question is too 

 momentous to be tampered with. Let bunglers be retired 

 and experience come to the front. A tribunal the people 

 will have, and are entitled to have. That claim is not in 

 dispute. But let it be constituted with an eye to fitness. 

 The railroads are on trial. Give them the inalienable right 

 to challenge jurors who are foresworn to adjudge them guilty 

 before hearing the evidence. Demagogues have incited the 

 people to clutch at the throats of the corporations, dethrone 

 justice, and drown her voice amid communistic cries for 

 confiscation clamorings that will be certain, eventually, to 

 react upon the land-owners who were duped into inaugurat 

 ing the warfare. 



To obviate public jealousy and secure efficient manage 

 ment, the chief of the tribunal or board for the several 

 control of railways, should be selected with exclusive regard 

 to his fitness ; and the board thus created should be placed 

 beyond the range of political action. Being intrusted with 

 duties demanding extraordinary qualifications, industry., and 

 discrimination, the term of office should not be dependent 

 upon the uncertain dictates of legislators, nor expire with 

 every administration. Fidelity to the trusts reposed should 

 regulate the term of service. Some such conception as this 

 possessed the late Robert Stephenson, when, in his inaug 

 ural address as President of fhe British Institute of Civil 

 Engineers, he said : &quot; What we ask is knowledge ; give us, 



