to time, as one party or the other succeeded to office, and this want of continuity would prejudicially affect the management of the railways, and the commercial interests so largely dependent upon them.
All experience of the working and of the scale of expenditure of Government departments is strongly opposed to the belief that so vast and difficult an undertaking as the administration of the railways of the country could be carried on economically and upon sound commercial principles by a department of State. Complaints would be innumerable, and the House of Commons, already overburdened with matters of detail, would, by the multitude of questions to be asked and answered, find its labours so much increased that the business of the country would be seriously interfered with. The traders, who have now the advantage of free access to the officials engaged in the management of the railways—men trained to understand their business and their needs, and willing and anxious to meet their views and assist their operations—would find themselves confronted by the attitude of a Government official, bound inflexibly by hard and fast rules, with no personal discretion, and with, above all, a great disinclination to incur any responsibility.
It only remains to add that in France, where the experiment of ownership of railways by the State has been tried for many years past on a very considerable scale, an agitation, is now growing up, as may be gathered from recent debates in the French Chambers, for the absolute sale of the State railways to private companies, on the grounds that the present system involves a very heavy annual loss to the Exchequer, and that any advantages which might be expected to result from the ownership
