Railways and the State 263 



industry and trade, and saving us from that anarchy and con- 

 fusion to which distress was fast hurrying a large proportion 

 of our population ? With all these advantages staring us in 

 the face, what have the Government done to promote rail- 

 ways ? Have they done a single thing ? I am not conscious 

 of one. Have they removed a single impediment ? Not to 

 my knowledge ; but they have raised several. Have they 

 contributed a single farthing ? Rather, I believe, by the 

 intolerable and vexatious oppositions permitted in passing 

 the bills, have been the cause of spending many hundred 

 thousands, which, like another national debt, will prey to the 

 end of time on the vitals of public industry." 



The Duke's proposed clause was dropped, and was heard 

 of no more ; but Herapath's prediction as to the equivalent 

 of " another national debt " being imposed on public industry 

 was to be verified by the course of subsequent events still 

 more than by any avoidable expenditure then already incurred. 



If, again, as Herapath said, the Government had done 

 nothing to promote railways, they had not been backward 

 in seeking advantage from them in the interests both of the 

 Exchequer and of the Post Office. 



Within two years of the opening of the Liverpool and 

 Manchester line, a tax of one-eighth of a penny per mile for 

 every passenger conveyed on the railway was imposed, and 

 the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester, then struggling 

 into existence, announced that, in consequence of the tax, 

 they would be obliged to charge the public higher fares. By 

 1840 the Exchequer receipts from the tax amounted to 

 112,000. Two years later, following on a great public agita- 

 tion, Peel substituted for the mileage tax a tax of five per 

 cent on receipts from passenger traffic, and in 1844 the tax 

 (which had been especially oppressive on the poorer class of 

 travellers) was abolished in the case of third-class passengers 

 carried at fares not exceeding a penny a mile in " Parlia- 

 mentary trains," stopping at every station. 1 



The local authorities, with Parliamentary sanction, also 

 subjected the railways to a degree of taxation against which 



1 Under the Cheap Trains Act of 1883 the duty was remitted in the case 

 of all fares not exceeding the rate of one penny a mile, and was reduced 

 to two per cent on fares exceeding that rate for conveyance between urban 

 stations within one urban district. 



