268 History of Inland Transport 



written, certain views and proposals put forward by the 

 Select Committee of 1844, of which Mr Gladstone (then 

 President of the Board of Trade) was chairman. In the Fifth 

 Report of this Committee it is said : 



" The Committee entertain very strongly the opinion that 

 in the future proceedings of Parliament railway schemes 

 ought not to be regarded as merely projects of local improve- 

 ment, but that each new line should be viewed as a member 

 of a great system of communication, binding together the 

 various districts of the country with a closeness and intimacy 

 of relation in many respects heretofore unknown." 



So long, the Report continued, as railways were considered 

 to be of problematical benefit, and were in general subject 

 to extensive opposition on the part of the owners and occupiers 

 of land, and of the inhabitants of the districts they traversed, 

 there might have been reasons for ensuring a very full, and, 

 in some points of view, a disproportionately full, representation 

 to local interests ; but " The considerations which tend to 

 attach to railways a national rather than a local character gain 

 weight from year to year as those undertakings are pro- 

 gressively consolidated among themselves, as the points of 

 contact between them are multiplied, and as those that 

 were first isolated in comparison are thus brought into rela- 

 tion with gradually extending ranges of space, traffic and 

 population." 



The Select Committee went on to give their reasons for 

 considering that the ordinary machinery of Private Bill 

 Committees, with their separate and unconnected proceed- 

 ings, and an individual existence commencing and ending 

 with each particular Bill, was inadequate and unsatisfactory ; 

 and they especially pointed to the fact that hitherto it had 

 not been customary to examine railway Bills "systematically 

 and at large with reference to public interests." There were 

 various questions which could not be thoroughly sifted under 

 the mode of procedure then in vogue, and the Committee 

 recommended that, with a view to assisting the judgment of 

 the Houses of the Legislature, all future railway Bills should, 

 previously to coming before Parliament, be submitted to 

 the Board of Trade for their report thereon. They further 

 said and these observations have a special significance in 

 view of events that were to follow : 



