PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 781 



a real danger where railways are managed under a parliamentary regime by a 

 Minister directly responsible to Parliament ; but that difficulty, it is said, can be 

 got over by the appointment of an independent Commission entirely outside the 

 political arena. History does not altogether justify the contention. The last 

 Keport of the Victorian State Ilailways gives a list of seven branches, with an 

 aggregate length of 46 miles, constructed under the Commissioner regime at a 

 cost of 387 ,000?., which are now closed for traffic and abandoned because the 

 gross receipts failed even to cover the out-of-pocket working expenses. It is 

 not alleged, nor is it a fact, that those lines were constructed in consequence of 

 any eiTor of judgment on the part of the Commissioners. But in truth it is 

 inherently impossible to use a Commission to protect a community against itself. 

 In theory a Commission might be a despot perfectly benevolent and perfectly 

 intelligent ; in that case, however, it can hardly be said that the nation manages 

 its own railways. But of course any such idea is practically impossible, because 

 despots, however benevolent and intelligent, cannot be made to fit into the frame- 

 work of an Anglo-Saxon constitution. In practical life the Railway Commission 

 must be responsible to someone, and that someone can only be a member of the 

 political Government of the day. 



I have indicated what in America, where the subject is much more carefully 

 considered than here, is regarded as a great obstacle to a State-railway system ; 

 but I have pointed out also that it is quite possible that statesmen fully alive to 

 the dangers may yet find themselves constrained to risk them unless some satis- 

 factory method of controlling private railway enterprise can be found. I do not 

 think it can be considered that this has been done in England at the present time. 

 In the main we have relied on the force of competition to secure for us reasonable 

 service at not unreasonable rates ; and as I still cherish a long-formed belief that 

 English railways are on the whole among the best, if not actually the best, in thw 

 world, I am far from saying that competition has not done its work well. Bat 

 competition is an instrument that is at this moment breaking in our hands. 

 Within quite a few years the South Eastern Railway was united with the 

 Chatham ; the Great Southern has obtained a monopoly over a large part of 

 Ireland ; in Scotland the Caledonian and the North British, the Highland and 

 the Great North have in very great measure ceased to compete. If the present 

 proposals for the working union of the Great Eastern, the Great Northern and 

 the Great Central go through, competition in the East of England will be 

 absolutely non-existent from the Channel to the Tweed. And one can hardly 

 suppose that matters will stop there. In fact, since this address was in type a 

 comprehensive scheme of arrangement for a long term of years between' the 

 London and North Western and the Midland has been announced. We must, I 

 think, assume that competition, which has done good work for the public in its day, 

 is practically ceasing to have any real operation in regulating English railways. 



For regulation, therefore, we must fall back on Government ; but how shall 

 a Government exercise its functions? Regulation maybe legislative, judicial, 

 executive, or, as usually happens in practice, a combination of all three. But 

 we may notice that, as Mr. Adams points out, in Anglo-Saxon countries it is 

 the Legislature and the Judicature that are predominant ; whereas in a country 

 like France, which though a democracy is bureaucratically organised, it is execu- 

 tive regulation that is most important. Now, the capacity of the Legislature 

 to regulate is strictly limited ; it cau lay down general rules ; it can, so to 

 speak, provide a framework, but it cannot decide ad hoc how to fit into that 

 framework the innumerable questions that come up for practical decision day 

 by day. 



The capacity of the Law Courts to regulate is even more strictly limited. 

 For not only is it confined within the precise limits of the jurisdiction expressly 

 conferred upon it by the Legislature, but further, by the necessity of the case, a 

 court of law can only decide the particular case brought before it ; a hundred 

 other cases, equally important in principle, and perhaps more important in practice, 

 may never be brought before it at all. Even if the Court had decided all the 

 principles, it has no machinery to secure their application to any other case than 



