372 History of Inland Transport 



proportion in which the results of this taxation system should 

 ultimately fall on, or be made good by () shareholders, or 

 (b) traders and travellers, the policy, if not the justice, of 

 allowing the internal transport of the country, and, therefore, 

 the trade and industry of the country, to be subjected to this 

 abnormal taxation, if not to this actual plundering, by con- 

 stituted authorities, may well be open to question, and 

 especially so when one bears in mind the already heavy 

 expenditure which has fallen on the companies, and the 

 dissatisfaction expressed, from time to time, by traders with 

 the railway rates, by railway servants with their pay, and by 

 shareholders with their dividends. Certain it is that in the 

 Board of Trade " Railway Returns " all these payments on 

 account of rates and taxes and Government duty are included 

 among the items of " working expenditure," and are deducted 

 from the gross receipts before arriving at the amount of the 

 net income available for dividends or to be taken in account 

 in regard either to reductions in rates and charges or to in- 

 creases in wages. 



There is no suggestion that railways should be exempted 

 altogether from the payment of local rates ; but the com- 

 plicated, anomalous and exorbitant system of taxing the 

 traffic on their lines has long called for amendment. 



So far back as 1844 Mr Gladstone's Committee declared 

 they were " satisfied that peculiar difficulties attach to the 

 application of the ordinary laws of rating to the case of 

 railways which give rise to great uncertainty and inequality, 

 as well as to expense^and litigation, and they therefore con- 

 sider that the subject is one which will properly call for the 

 attention of the Legislature when any general measure 

 for the amendment of the law and practice of rating is 

 before it." 



In 1850 the unsatisfactory nature of the law and practice 

 in regard to' railway assessments was pointed to by a Select 

 Committee of the House of Lords on " Parochial Assess- 

 ments." 



In 1851 Lord Campbell adjourned the case of R. v. Great 

 Western Railway Company, and expressed the hope that 

 " before the next term Parliament might interfere " and 

 relieve the court from the difficult position in which they 

 were placed when called upon to administer the existing law 



