782 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



the one particular case ou which judgment was given. There was a case decided 

 thirty years ago by our Railway Commission, the principle of which, had it been 

 generally applied throughout the country, would hav6 revolutionised the whole 

 carrying business of Great Britain. It has not been so applied, to the great 

 advantage in my judgment of English trade. Further, the great bulk of the cases 

 which make up the practical work of a railway : ' What is a reasonable rate, having 

 regard to all the circumstances, present and prospective, of the case ? Would it be 

 reasonable to run a new train or to take off an old one ? Would it be reasonable 

 to open a new station, to extend the area of free cartage, and the like ? ' — all these 

 are questions of discretion, of commercial instinct. They can only be answered 

 with a ' Probably on the whole,' not with a categorical ' Yes ' or ' No,' and they 

 are absolutely unsuitable for determination by the positive methods of the Law 

 Court with its precisely defined issues, its sworn evidence, and its rigorous 

 exclusion of what, while the lawyer describes it as irrelevant, is often precisely 

 the class of consideration which would determine one way or other the decision 

 of the practical man of business. 



It seems to me, therefore, that both in England and in America we must 

 expect to see in the near future a considerable development of executive govern- 

 ment control over railways. 



This is not the place to discuss in detail the form that control should take, but 

 one or two general observations seem worth making. The leading example of 

 executive control is France ; in that country the system is worked out with all 

 the French neatness and all the French logic. But it is impossible to imagine the 

 French principle being transplanted here. For one thing, the whole French rail- 

 way finance rests upon the guarantee of the Government. The French Govern- 

 ment pays, or at least is liable to pay, the piper, and has therefore the right to call 

 the tune. The English Government has not paid, and does not propose to pay, 

 and its claim to call the tune is therefore much less. Morally the French Govern- 

 ment has a right — so far at least as the railway shareholders are concerned 

 • — to call on a French company to carry workmen at a loss; morally, in my 

 judgment at least, the English Government has no such right. But there is 

 a further objection to the French system : the officers of the French companies 

 have on their own responsibility to form their own decisions, and then the officers 

 of the French Gnverument have, also on their own responsibility, to decide whether 

 the decision of the company's officer shall be allowed to take efl["ect or not. The 

 company's officer has the most knowledge and the most interest in deciding 

 rightly, but the Government official has the supreme power. The system has 

 worked — largely, I think, because the principal officers of the companies have 

 been trained as Government servants in one or other of the great Engineering 

 Corps, des Mines or des Pouts et Chaus»5es. But it is vicious in principle, and in 

 any case would not bear transplanting. 



What we need is a system under which the responsibility rests, as at present, 

 with a single man (let us call him the general manager), and he does what he on 

 the whole decides to be best, subject however to this : that if he does what no 

 reasonable man could do, or refuses to do what any reasonable man would do, 

 there shall be a power behind to restrain, or, as the case may be, to compel him. 

 And that power may, I think, safely be simply the Minister — let us call him the 

 President of the Board of Trade. For, be it observed, tlie question for him is not 

 the exceedingly difficult and complicated question, ' What is best to be done ? ' but 

 the quite simple question, ' Is the decision come to which I am asked to reverse so 

 obviously wrong that no reasonable man could honestly make it.*^ ' 



And even this comparatively simple question the President would not be 

 expected to decide unaided. He will need competent advisory bodies. Railway 

 history shows two such bodies that have been eminently successful — the Prussian 

 State Railway Councils and the Massachusetts Railroad Commission. Wholly 

 unlike in most respects, they are yet alike in this: their proceedings are public, 

 their conclusions are published, and those conclusions have no mandatory force 

 whatever. And it is to these causes that, in my judgment, their success, which is 

 undeniable, is mainly due. Let me describe both bodies a little more at length. 



