Railway Expansion 255 



expenditure involved in meeting extortionate demands had 

 either to remain unremunerative or be made good out of the 

 payments of travellers and traders, it is evident that com- 

 parisons between English and foreign railway rates and fares 

 may be carried to unreasonable lengths if they ignore con- 

 ditions of origin by which the operation of the lines concerned 

 must necessarily have been more or less influenced. Francis 

 himself says on this point, while confessing that " every line 

 in England has cost more than it ought " : 



" The reader may learn to moderate his intense indignation 

 when, anathematising railways, he remembers with what 

 unjust demands and impure claims they had to deal, and 

 with what sad and selfish treatment it was their lot to meet. 

 They owe nothing to the country ; they owe nothing to the 

 aristocracy. They were wronged by the former ; they were 

 contumaciously treated by the latter." 



Another factor, apart from cost of land, in swelling the con- 

 struction capital of British railways to abnormal proportions 

 has been the cost of Parliamentary proceedings ; and here, 

 again, State railways have had the advantage. In Prussia 

 the obtaining of sanction for the building of an additional 

 line by the State railways administration is little more than 

 a matter of official routine ; whereas in England the expenses 

 incurred by railway companies in obtaining their Acts have 

 often amounted to a prodigious sum to be added, of course, 

 to the capital outlay which the users of the railway will be 

 expected to recoup, or, at least, to pay interest on. 



An especially striking example was that of the Blackwall 

 Railway, now leased to the Great Eastern Railway Company. 

 The cost of obtaining the Act for this line, which is only five 

 miles and a quarter in length, worked out at no less a sum 

 than 14,414 per mile, the total cost being thus 75,673. The 

 amounts paid by certain other companies in securing their 

 Parliamentary powers are given as follows by G. R. Porter in 

 his " Progress of the Nation " (1846) : 



Birmingham and Gloucester . . 22,618 



Bristol and Gloucester . . . 25,589 



Bristol and Exeter .... 18,592 



Eastern Counties .... 39,171 



Great Western. .... 89,197 



