RAILWAYS. . 73 



THE RAILWAYS OF IRELAND. 



Shortly after 1834, when the first railway in Ireland — the line from Dublin 

 to Kingstown — was opened, and before any other line was commenced, a 

 Royal Commission was appointed for the purpose of considering, with a 

 view to developing the resources of the country, a general system of railways 

 for Ireland, and the best methods of directing the growth of this new means 

 of transit so that the greatest advantage might be obtained by the smallest 

 outlay. After an elaborate survey the Commission reported that the cir- 

 cumstances of Ireland were entirely different from those of England, and 

 that it could not be expected that the volume of traffic would induce private 

 companies to duplicate the trunk lines of the country. Accordingly, the 

 Commission reported in favour of State assistance, and in the same year 

 resolutions to the following effect were carried in the House of Commons : — 



1. " That the Irish Railways should be constructed with money sup- 

 plied by the British Treasury, and that they should be under State 

 control." 



2. " That the revenue from the lines should be applied — -ist, in their 

 maintenance ; 2nd, in the payment of 3 ji' per cent, on their cost ; 3rd, 

 in repayment of the cost by instalments of i ^4 P^r cent. ; 4th, in 

 reducing the rates of carriage." 



However, in the words of the official record, " The question of Government 

 interference was subsequently dropped, and private companies were allowed 

 to proceed as in England and in Scotland." One of the chief features of 

 the Irish Railway System that thus came into existence was the great num- 

 ber of small companies which sprang up, and though a considerable portion 

 of the smaller railways have been absorbed by the great trunk lines, the 

 three thousand odd miles of Irish railways — a mileage not exceeding by 

 much that of a single English line, the Great Western — are controlled by 

 nearly thirty companies, each with its own directors and salaried officials. 

 State purchase of the railways has been not infrequently advocated as pre- 

 ferable to either competition or amalgamation ; but any consideration of the 

 merits of these rival schemes is necessarily outside the limitations of this 

 article. 



There are a few features which distinguish Irish railways very markedly 

 from English. In the first place, shortly after railway activity commenced 

 to operate in Ireland, the population began to decrease — and this decrease 

 has since continued — so that Irish companies, instead of being almost over- 

 whelmed, like the English railways, with traffic produced by the unforeseen 

 growth of large towns, have had to face the opposite difficulty of paying 

 their way in a country which becomes more and more deserted as time goes 

 on. This fact should always be borne in mind by the critical examiner uf 

 Irish railways. 



In one respect, in the matter of gauge, the railways of Ireland enjoy an 

 immense advantage over those of Great Britain. The first railway in 

 Ireland was constructed by a company formed in 1831 to connect Dubhn 

 with Kingstown. This line, six miles in length, was opened for traffic in 

 1834, and for several years was the only railway in the country, and before 



