254 History of Inland Transport 



tendency to extort as much as possible from the railway com- 

 panies. Among these may be mentioned the voluntary return 

 by the Duke of Bedford of a sum of 150,000 paid to him as 

 compensation, his Grace explaining that the railway had 

 benefitted instead of injuring his property ; and by Lord 

 Taunton of 15,000 out of 35,000 because his property had 

 not suffered so much as had been anticipated. Exceptions 

 such as these do not, however, alter the fact that, as stated 

 by Francis in 1851, the London and Birmingham Company 

 had had to pay for land and compensation an average of 

 6300 per mile, the Great Western 6696, the London and 

 South Western 4000 and the Brighton Company 8000 per 

 mile. 



One argument, at least, which can be advanced in favour 

 of State railways as applying, however, to a country be- 

 ginning the creation of a railway system, or building new 

 railways, rather than to one taking over an existing system 

 is that extortions in respect to land could not be practised 

 on the State in the same way as they have been practised on 

 English railway companies left by their Government to make 

 the best terms they could with those who were in a position 

 to drive the hardest of bargains with them. In Prussia, for 

 example, the securing of land for any new lines wanted for 

 the State railway system is a comparatively simple matter. 

 If the landowner and the responsible officials cannot agree 

 to terms, the matter is referred to arbitration, though with 

 every probability that the landowner will get no more than 

 a fair sum, and will not be able to extort fancy figures under 

 the head of consequential damages or as the " price " of his 

 withdrawing any opposition he might otherwise offer. 



Apart from other considerations, and taking only the one 

 item of land, the State lines of Continental countries may well 

 have cost less to construct than the English lines, while both 

 in the United States and in Canada the pioneer railway com- 

 panies had great stretches of land given to them, by State 

 or Federal Government, not alone for their lines, but as a 

 further means of assisting them financially. 



When one finds how the cost of creating the railway system 

 in our own country was swollen, under the conditions here 

 stated, to far greater proportions than should have been the 

 case, and when one remembers that the excessive capital 



