660 
Light Railways. 
of the Bill as proved — that is, to translate into non-technical 
language, to admit the desirability in the public interest of passing 
it — not by the evidence of hosts of witnesses brought up from 
distant parts of the country for the purpose, but on the faith of 
duly certified resolutions of the local authorities concerned. If 
some such procedure as is here sketched out were adopted, and 
if, further, the joint Committee of the two Houses could sit with 
the reasonable regularity of an ordinary law court, from eleven to 
four, four or even five days a week, it would be quite possible to 
bring the cost of Light Railway Acts within a very moderate 
compass. 
There is another head under which the cost of our English rail- 
ways has been equally large, that, namely, of the purchase of 
land. On this subject one thing may be said at the outset, 
that unless the average cost can be very largely reduced, any 
rapid extension of light railways is out of the question. There 
are evidently two ways in which this can be done. The one — 
the most satisfactory from all points of view — that everyone 
who has land to sell, or interests in land to be affected, should 
be moderate and reasonable in his demands. If this ideal state 
of things were to come to pass there would be no need for 
further discussion of the question. As that, however, is im- 
probable in this workaday world, the question will have to be 
faced whether any, and if so what, modification of the code 
which has grown up under the Lands Clauses Act can reason- 
ably be introduced. The subject is, of course, an exceedingly 
difficult one, and it may be that the Legislature will not be able 
to do much. Two things, perhaps, it might fairly do. It 
might specially provide, as has been done in the case of the 
Housing of the Working Classes Acts, that no extra allowance 
should be made for compulsory purchase ; and, secondly, it 
might enact that a company taking land — or, at any rate, 
agricultural land — for a light railway should be allowed to set 
off against the value of the land and the injury to the adjoining 
land, by severance and so forth, the estimated benefit that the 
construction of the railway would be to the estate. If public 
opinion were prepared to go further and authorise a Government 
surveyor to decide right out the value of the land to be acquired, 
an even greater economy might be effected. But when all is 
said and done we may lay our account with this — that, unless 
public opinion in the locality is strongly in favour of the line, 
there will certainly be found enough opponents who will 
threaten litigation, and the consequent expenditure of money 
which the railway has not got to spare. From such a district 
promoters, if they are wise, will simply turn away to direct 
