282 History of Inland Transport 



authority, and had invested their money on the faith, of 

 Parliament." Mr Gladstone's Committee of 1844 also declared 

 that they had been " governed throughout their consideration 

 of the subject by the strongest conviction that no step should 

 be taken by Parliament which would either induce so much 

 as a reasonable suspicion of its good faith with regard to the 

 integrity of privileges already granted, and not shown to 

 have been abused, or which would prospectively discourage 

 the disposition now so actively in operation to extend the 

 railway system by the formation of new lines." 



On the other hand, there was that ever-present and ever- 

 active dread of what might happen if the railway companies did 

 become grasping and merciless monopolists. There was, 

 also, the fact that while there would be direct competition 

 between two railways having the same terminal points, each line 

 might further serve a more or less considerable and important 

 intermediate stretch of country which otherwise would be 

 left without railway accommodation at all. 



For one or other of these reasons competing lines continued 

 to be sanctioned, notwithstanding Special Committees' recom- 

 mendations and railway companies' protests. One such pro- 

 test, giving a specific example of the tendencies of the day, 

 was made in a memorial to the Board of Trade, dated June 

 26, 1857, and headed, " Proposed Remedies for Railway 

 Grievances." The memorial, signed by Sir John Hall, Bart., 

 and six others, and addressed to Lord Stanley of Alderley, 

 president, and Mr Robert Lowe, vice-president, of the Board 

 of Trade, had been drawn up at the request of those two 

 gentlemen as a more detailed statement of facts to which 

 their attention had already been called. Five specific griev- 

 ances were dealt with, and the first of these was " The Tendency 

 of Parliament to concede competing or otherwise unnecessary 

 lines." Under this head the memorialists state : 



"It is not our desire that the railway system should be 

 legislatively restricted within its present limits, or that exist- 

 ing shareholders should by any process whatever be nominally 

 or practically gifted with a monopoly of the means of railway 

 transit. We should submit to the introduction of new lines 

 of railway wherever called for by absolute public necessity. 

 ... In such cases, however, we consider that the Legislature 

 would only be doing justice to its previous enactments in 



