автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Rambles on Railways

Cusack Patrick Roney

RAMBLES ON RAILWAYS.

With Maps, Diagrams, and Appendices

BY

SIR CUSACK P. RONEY,

B.A. TRIN. COLL. DUB., L.R.C.S.I.

LONDON: EFFINGHAM WILSON.

1868.

All Rights Reserved.

PREFACE.

Just as the Author was completing the last of the following pages, he was seized with very serious illness. It has delayed their production two months beyond the time originally advertised. Meanwhile, several changes have taken place, which, though not of much importance, may be briefly referred to. Thus, Mr. Anthony Trollope, mentioned at page 104 as amongst the literary men connected with the Post Office, has, since that page was printed off, ceased to be an officer of the department.

Some trifling errors must also be mentioned; thus, at note of page 211, the length of Australian railways is stated at 480 miles, whereas it should have been 669, as set forth at page 307. Page 212; it is stated that the Euston portico is not used by anybody, whereas empty cabs, having set down their fares, go through it. Page 359; the name of the Secretary of the Palestine Fund is “Grove” not “Groves.” Page 390, line 27; the St. John’s Wood Railway terminates at 1 mile and 1,320 yards from Baker Street, and then the Hampstead Extension will commence with a gradient of 1 in 27. Page 423, line 11; for “Lowe” read “Love.”

The most important correction to be made has reference to pages 149 and 150, relating to the railway capital raised, traffic receipts, and net earnings for 1865. When the words in the text were written the complete returns of the Board of Trade had not been published, and the Author assumed that the debenture and preferential capital was greater in amount than it really is. The reader is, therefore, requested to take the subjoined analysis of the railway capital of the United Kingdom, extracted from the City article of the Times, of October 29th, 1867, as containing an exact statement of the several portions into which that capital was divided on the 31st of December, 1865, and to substitute it for the statements in the text as given in the before mentioned pages. If the traffic accounts, as published by the railway companies, be really correct, and that capital has not been improperly charged with items that should, in reality, be attributable to revenue, the dividends on unguaranteed capital are better, as a whole, than the Author assumed them to be.

“The complete railway returns of the Board of Trade for the year ended the 31st of December, 1865, have just been printed. They are full and elaborate, and would furnish excellent means for estimating the prospects of the enormous property involved, were it not for the drawback of their being issued so long after the period to which they refer. The leading features of the tables now presented may be summarised as follows:—At the end of 1865 the total ordinary capital of the railways of the United Kingdom was £219,598,196. Of this total £183,450,460 was represented by companies paying dividends, and £36,147,736, by companies (chiefly the Great Eastern and London and Chatham) not paying dividends, the latter including £12,849,590 for lines not yet opened. Setting aside the unopened lines, and reckoning only the capital of those at work—namely, £206,748,606—the average rate of distribution was £4. 11s. 5d. per cent., a satisfactory return could an assumption be safely made that it had not been in any degree paid out of capital. The result would have been still better but for the extent to which the average rate is reduced by the circumstance of the profits of the Scotch and Irish being below those of the English lines. The English rate was £4. 14s. 10d. per cent., while the Scotch was £4. 9s. 5d., and the Irish only £2. 16s. 8d. The lowest dividend disbursed by any of the English dividend-paying companies (57 in number) was by the Cromford and High Peak, which on an ordinary capital of £127,700 distributed 8s. per cent. for the year, while the highest was £11. 2s. 6d., by the Lancaster and Carlisle on an ordinary capital of £2,420,300. The main cause of the respectable average of the English dividends is found, however, in the payment of £6. 12s. 6d. per cent. by the London and North-Western on an ordinary capital of £23,378,987; of £6. 15s. per cent. by the Midland, on £10,862,067; and of £7. 2s. 6d. per cent. by the Great Northern, on £6,455,584. At the same time there is an item which must now be regarded as fictitious, of £5. 15s. per cent., by the Brighton line, on an ordinary capital of £5,342,933. Of 19 dividend-paying lines in Scotland, the lowest was the Carlisle and Silloth Bay, 10s. per cent., and the highest was the Kilmarnock and Troon, £9. 5s. per cent., the ordinary capital of the latter being only £40,000. In this list the Caledonian figures for £7. 2s. 6d. on an ordinary capital of £4,141,254. Of 11 dividend-paying lines in Ireland, the lowest was the Waterford and Limerick, 15s. per cent., and the highest the Dublin and Kingstown, 9 per cent. The preferential capital of the railways of the United Kingdom was £124,263,475, and upon this the average rate paid (reckoning a sum of £8,455,279, on which the companies were unable to distribute anything) was £4. 7s. 9d. per cent. The total of the debenture stock, or funded debt of the railways in the United Kingdom, was only £13,795,375, and on this the average rate paid was £4. 2s. per cent., while the debenture loans, subject to renewal, and which in times of pressure must always be a cause of danger, amounted to £97,821,097, at an average rate of £4. 8s. 5d. per cent. The total paid-up capital of all kinds stood at £455,478,143.”

The Author had thought, that in tracing tunnels to the time of the erection of Babylon, he had gone as far backward as it was possible to extend research on this subject. It appears, however, that he was mistaken, for, during a visit that he paid to Paris just before his illness, he lighted, in Galignani, upon the following extraordinary paragraph, which is given in extenso, exactly as he found it.

“Antiquity of Man.—A most singular and unexpected discovery has just occurred at Chaguay, Department of the Soane et Loire, by some workmen. Engrossed in digging the foundations of a railway shed, at the depth of about ten yards, in a stratum of muddy clay and ferruginous oxides, remains of proboscians (elephants, rhinoceroses, &c.), were brought to light, comprising several back teeth and a formidable tusk, in large fragments, which, on being put together, constituted a length of seven feet. The depth at which this was found was more than six yards, higher than the level of the most considerable inundations of the Dheune, and in an undisturbed stratum. So far, there is nothing absolutely extraordinary, but who would have thought of finding, underneath the bed containing these fossils of the tertiary period, an aqueduct of the most primitive kind of human workmanship? Yet such is the case, and it is the only case of the kind on record. It is explained by M. Tremaux, who relates the circumstance, by the supposition—what seems indeed to have been the fact—that the tertiary fragments above alluded to had been pushed into the trench by a violent inundation, and thus filled up the aqueduct. The discovery of this aqueduct does not by any means authorise us to carry the antiquity of man as far back as the tertiary period, for, although the aqueduct lies under a stratum of tertiary formation, this stratum does not belong to the place, but was transported thither at a later period.”

One step from that period, whatever it was, to Anno Christi 1867. During the visit above referred to, the Author was afforded the opportunity, by M. Mouton, the eminent French contractor, of an inspection of the plans of the proposed Paris Underground Railway, which it is hoped will be commenced before the expiration of 1868. The course of the line is from Long Champs Race-course, beside the Seine, near Paris, underneath the Bois de Boulogne, thence to Arc de l’Etóile, from there almost in a straight line along the Champs Elysées, the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue St. Antoine, to the Chemins de Fer de Vincennes, thence to the Mazas Station of the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Railway. Branches are given off from the main line just described, right and left, so as to form a complete underground connection between all the Railway Termini of Paris. There will be one bridge over the Seine, and one tunnel under it. The total length of the railway and branches will be 23 kilometres, of which about 18 will be in tunnel or covered way.

It only remains for the Author to express the sense of deep obligation which he feels to his numerous railway friends for the kindness and promptitude with which they have afforded him information upon every point upon which he sought it from them. It had been his wish to enumerate specially the names of all these gentlemen, and it is a source of much regret to him that the limited space allowed for the Preface prevents his performing this act of grateful recognition. To Mr. William Haywood, the Engineer of the Corporation of London; to Mr. John Fowler, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers; and to other members of the profession, he is also much indebted. He ventures likewise to tender his respectful thanks to George Graham, Esq., the Registrar-General, for the great kindness and courtesy with which he replied to several questions relating to populations; and the expression of the same feeling is due to Mr. Juland Danvers, the Government Director of Indian Railways, from whom information was sought on several occasions.

The Author has by him materials for another volume of “Rambles on Railways,” (relating principally to the railway networks of Foreign countries), which may probably be published in the course of the present year.

London,

January 1868.

[viii] [ix]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

Travelling Two Hundred and One Hundred Years ago—The Liverpool and Manchester Railway—The First Locomotive, “Rocket”—The Grand Junction, London and Birmingham, and Birmingham and Manchester Railways—The Midland Railway—Early Gradients, Increase in their Steepness and in the Power of the Locomotive—The Carriage Road-way Passes of the Alps—Mountains of the World—The Sœmmering and Brenner Railways—The Route between London and Paris

1

CHAPTER II.

Union Pacific Railroad—South Austrian and Alta Italia—Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean—Orleans—Mileage, Cost, and Receipts of French Railways—London Traffic—London and North-Western Railway

17

CHAPTER III.

Railways of the United Kingdom—Coal and Iron

40

CHAPTER IV.

Railways and the Post Office—Speed on Railways

73

CHAPTER V.

Railways and the Post Office—

continued 115

CHAPTER VI.

Railway Receipts, Working Expenses, and Profits in the United Kingdom— Delays and Accidents

147

CHAPTER VII.

Horses and Engines—Crewe

186

CHAPTER VIII.

A Journey on the Locomotive

210

CHAPTER IX.

Indian Railways

245

CHAPTER X.

Canadian and Australian Railways—The Railways of other British Colonies

301

CHAPTER XI.

Paris to St. Michel—“Above Sea-Level”—The Holborn Viaduct—The Mont Cenis Railway

316

CHAPTER XII.

Tunnels, Ancient and Modern

358

CHAPTER XIII.

The Great Tunnel of the Alps—Tunnel Ventilation—Ventilation in the Metropolitan Railway

401

CHAPTER XIV.

Italy—The Eastern Mails—Sicily

427

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX, No. 1.

PAGE

Report by Mr. Edward Page, Inspector-General of Mails, on some points connected with the relations between the Post Office Department and Railway Companies

439

APPENDIX, No. 2.

Reply of Robert Stephenson, Esq., M.P., President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, to Observations in the Second Report of the Postmaster-General. Delivered at the Meeting of May 20th, 1856

454

APPENDIX, No. 3.

Copy of Letter Addressed to a Member of the Italian Parliament upon the Importance of the Eastern Mails, now despatched

viâ

Marseilles and

viâ

Southampton, being transmitted

viâ

Brindisi

482

INDEX

501

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS.

PAGE Routes from London to Brindisi by the Mont Cenis and the Brenner 14 Plan of the Harbour and Town of Brindisi 15 Map of the United States and the Union Pacific Railroad 17 Map of India and of Indian Railways 245 Gradients of Holborn Hill and Snow Hill, London 322 A Centre-Rail Engine and Train ascending a steep Gradient and going round a sharp Curve 334 Patent Centre-Rail Engine—Front Elevation 337 Map of the Underground Metropolitan Railway, London 387 Section of the Metropolitan Line 388 Section of Mr. Remmington’s Proposed Tunnel between France and England 399 The Great Tunnel of the Alps 401 Section of the Mont Cenis Railway 401

RAMBLES ON RAILWAYS.

CHAPTER I.

TRAVELLING TWO HUNDRED AND ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO—THE LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER RAILWAY—THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE, “ROCKET”—THE GRAND JUNCTION, LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM, AND BIRMINGHAM AND MANCHESTER RAILWAYS—THE MIDLAND RAILWAY—EARLY GRADIENTS, INCREASE IN THEIR STEEPNESS AND IN THE POWER OF THE LOCOMOTIVE—THE CARRIAGE ROAD-WAY PASSES OF THE ALPS—MOUNTAINS OF THE WORLD—THE SŒMMERING AND BRENNER RAILWAYS—THE ROUTE BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS.

When, in 1672, Madame de Sevigny wrote of a journey she had just made from Paris to Marseilles, she was able to inform her correspondent that she had completed it, with great satisfaction to herself, in a month. She travelled over 530 miles of ground; she was therefore able to get over some seventeen to eighteen miles a day. The courier that brought Madame de Sevigny’s letter from Marseilles to Paris travelled twice as fast as she had done. He was only a fortnight on the road. In that year the course of post between London and Edinburgh—130 miles less distance than between Paris and Marseilles—was two months: one month going with a letter, and one month coming back with the answer. Ninety years afterwards the one stage-coach between London and Edinburgh started once a month from each city. But in nine-tenths of a century, speed had been accelerated. It only took a fortnight on the road in each direction. Seventy-five years afterwards—that is, in 1837—the year before any portion of railway between the two capitals was opened for traffic, the mail-coach completed its 400 miles in forty-two hours, or one day eighteen hours. Now-a-days, our limited mail (one of the few “limited” associations of very modern date that has not come to grief) is 7½ hours less time over the road than eighteen hours; and by the time the one day in addition has expired, a course of post from Edinburgh to London, and back again from London to Edinburgh, will have been nearly completed.

On the 14th of September, 1830, we opened our first passenger railway in England worked by the locomotive. The line, thirty-one miles long, was then called the Liverpool and Manchester, but it has long since become part and parcel of the London and North-Western Company. Although the railway between Birmingham and Liverpool was first projected so far back as 1824, its construction was not sanctioned by Parliament until 1833, and it was not completed for traffic until the 6th of July, 1837. The then London and Birmingham Company also got its act of incorporation in 1833, but, owing to the difficult nature of many of its works, and the time required for their construction, it was only on the 20th of September, 1838, that Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham were completely connected with London by railway.

Several of the railways now constituting portions of the Midland Railway Company obtained their acts of incorporation in 1836. These lines, when amalgamated in 1844, comprised 181 miles. On the 1st of September, 1867, the mileage of the Midland Company was 695; and since the 1st of that month the important section between London and Bedford (forty-two miles long) was opened for goods traffic, thus making its present total working length, 737 miles.

By degrees, and notwithstanding the severe blow given to railway enterprise by the over-speculation of 1844-5, the net-work of British railways increased. On the 1st of January, 1843, there were 1,857 miles open for traffic; at the same date of 1849 they had increased to 5,007 miles; on the 1st of January, 1855, they were 8,054 miles; eight years afterwards, that is, on the 1st of January, 1863, they were 11,551; that day twelve months they were 12,322; on the 1st of January, 1865, they were 12,780; 1st January, 1866, 13,289; 1st of January, 1867, 13,882.[1]

We shall refer to the progress of the railway system on the continent of Europe and elsewhere hereafter.

Part of the heavy cost of the earlier railways was no doubt due to the apprehension of engineers on the subject of gradients. And in the then state of our knowledge as regards the powers of the locomotive, this is not to be wondered at. Our first constructed lines had most favourable gradients. The rise from Camden Town to Tring, 1 in 200, or 26 feet in the mile for 31 miles, was considered by the late Mr. Robert Stephenson as the maximum gradient that ought to be ventured upon. Joseph Locke, more daring and venturous, and perhaps more prescient, ventured upon 1 in 100, or 52 feet in the mile for 10 miles; this is on what is known as the Whitmore incline, between Stafford and Crewe. Bucke, the engineer of the line from Crewe to Manchester, originally known as the Manchester and Birmingham, which obtained its act of incorporation in the same year as the Grand Junction, although it was five years later in its opening, determined upon a course the opposite of that which Locke had taken. Bucke therefore made his thirty-one miles nearly level, and no doubt (if we except the exceptional Great Western) there is not a line in England that comprises works better laid out as regards gradient, or more solidly finished than those we are now referring to.

There is a capital run of railway between York and Darlington, forty-four miles, almost level, and nearly straight. It was on this line that, just twenty years ago, most of the experiments and trials were made, instituted to vindicate the narrow gauge as the best for carrying on the traffic of the country. These trials formed one of the many phases of the great battle of the gauges, fought so vigorously by its champions on each side; yet, in the short space of the fifth of a century, how many of these then active and doughty men have passed away from us for ever.

By degrees, as the railway system progressed, we made less flat gradients, and we made larger and more powerful locomotives. The result from the action of these two elements has been, that in present times we have got here and there to gradients of 1 in 45, 112 feet in the mile, more than four times as steep as Stephenson’s incline between Tring and Camden. It was on the 6th of October, 1829, that George Stephenson’s engine, “Rocket,” was first tried on a short length of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in the presence of thousands, poured in from the adjacent country. Since then the weight of the engine has risen tenfold, from six tons to sixty; its speed not quite three-fold, from twenty miles an hour to something under sixty. Additional weight has been essentially used for overcoming stiff gradients. The stiffest, as has just been said, 1 in 45, with a moderate load; a Titanic locomotive, unfettered with any weights behind her, can go up 1 in 25, or 211 feet in the mile; no steeper.[2]

But this rate of inclination, of 1 in 45, acquired on some few elevated ridges, as will be seen presently, at an enormous cost, was incapable of general application. Nevertheless, railways had hardly been established on low lands before men’s minds ran upon constructing them over mountains. It is now fully twenty years since the first idea of placing an iron road upon the bed of one or more of the carriage roadway passes of the Alps was promulgated. Of course it found favour, and created interest. Nor can this be matter of wonder when we remember that communication across them has, for centuries, been of world-wide importance. Even if we study the traces that still exist of man’s earliest history in mid and southern Europe, we find that the passage of the great barrier which for more than 500 miles separates north from south, had occupied men’s thoughts and actions from the remotest period. Etruscan tools, coins, and sacred images, have, as we learn from Dr. Ferdinand Keller’s recent work on the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, been found frequently and in abundance, not only on the northern slopes of the actual Alps, but far northward beyond them. We know too, that the ancient Helvites and Gauls were ever seeking the traverse of the snow-capped mountains, that they might exchange their own cold and sterile plains for those on the sunny side, which gave them warmth and luxurious cultivation. By degrees, the early few, savage, daring, and intrepid, increased in numbers; they became masses,—they became colonies. They obtained possession of, and held the districts which in modern times we knew as Venetia, Lombardy, and Savoy; but now they form the northern boundaries of undivided Italy.

In the early Roman period, the northern limit of Roman territory extended to the Po, and no farther. Beyond was Cisalpeà, and so it continued until Augustus Cæsar Imperator finally subdued, some thirty years before the birth of Christ, the whole of the warlike tribes, and brought them under Roman subjection. History records but one solitary instance of the vanquished erecting a monument to do honour to their conqueror. This was at Susa, and the inscription on the Porta Cæsaris Augusti tells us why it was erected, and what deed it was intended to perpetuate.

Hannibal’s was the first army that made a passage across the Alps, but the exact part at which he effected it is still matter of historic doubt. The balance of worthful opinion is however strongly in favour of its being by what we now call the Pass of the Little St. Bernard. The army would appear not to have been subjected to great difficulties in reaching its summit, notwithstanding that the 19th of October is believed to be the day on which the ascent was commenced, but the horrors to which his hourly thinned ranks were exposed, all occurred after they had attained the summit, and were within sight of the plains in which the autumnal foliage still spread a rich and glowing landscape before them. That some few of the army of ninety elephants with which Hannibal started from Spain completed the Alpine traverse is more than probable, but that one accomplished it is undoubted, for we have it on record that the Carthaginian General crossed the marshes of Clusium (which will be traversed by the railway train of the new and comparatively shorter line between Florence and Rome, to be opened for traffic a few months hence) upon the only elephant that was still spared to him.

Brockedon, whose illustrated work on Alpine Passes was published in 1828, states that there were ten passes traversable as carriage roads. The actual number has not been added to since then, but the trackway along many of the other passes has been greatly improved, and many, that at that period were only dangerous and very narrow mule paths, have now become available for chars, and possess other facilities and accommodation for traversing them that were quite unknown forty years ago. A very brief recapitulation of them may not be inappropriate. More full details of them can be obtained in The Alps and the Eastern Mails, a little work which we published a few months ago.

Commencing at the extreme west, we find the Col di Tenda, an easy pass for three-fourths of its ascent, when the mountain abruptly assumes a cone-like shape, and in a space of some two miles and a-half, rises on one side 1,200 feet. The descent on the other is of nearly equal length, and is nearly equally precipitous. Next comes Mont Genevre, the lowest of the Alpine passes that verge upon the Mediterranean. It is but a short giant’s step from Mont Genevre to the Mont Cenis. Next after, comes the Little St. Bernard, perhaps the easiest of all the passes over the Alps that connect important places together, for the construction of a carriage roadway. Napoleon, however, did not view it in this light, his great roads, being the Mont Cenis and the Simplon. Before we reach this last-named pass, we have that of the Great St. Bernard, one of the loftiest in the whole range, being in immediate proximity to the three highest mountains in Europe, Mont Blanc, 15,732 feet above the level of the sea, Mont Rosa, 15,130 feet, and Mont Cezvin, 14,835 feet.[3] It was by the Great St. Bernard that Napoleon crossed with an army from Switzerland into Italy, in the winter of 1800, and, by a fall from his mule, narrowly escaped being hurled from the precipice of St. Pierre into the abyss beneath it.

Next after the Simplon comes the St. Gothard, and then the Lukmanier, although this last can hardly be called a carriage roadway pass. Further east is the Bernardino. The easternmost pass between Switzerland and Italy, is the Splugen. There are as many as twenty passes available for mules and pedestrians between the Splugen and the next carriage road across the Alps, but they are only to be traversed by the knapsack tourist, who combines within himself vigorous health, activity, and endurance.

The Stelvio, the highest carriage road in Europe, 9,272 feet at its summit above the level of the sea, is, at that point, nearly 400 feet higher than the line of perpetual snow. It was constructed by the Austrians to give them direct access from Austria proper to Lombardy. The object in making it was political and military, not commercial; and now that not only Lombardy, but Venetia have become Italian, it is probable that a road, which in magnificence of conception and in grandeur of construction, exceeds even the Simplon, and which could only be maintained at great annual cost, will fall into decay.[4] For all the practical purposes of commerce it is useless, as within a short distance from it is the Brenner, the oldest, and at the same time the lowest carriage road across any of the Alpine passes. It has, in fact, been for centuries the trackway that has connected eastern and southern Germany with Lombardy and Venetia. It likewise can lay claim to the distinction of being the first pass that was made fit for the transport of carriages and of other vehicles, for it was certainly available for them, and was a good carriage road in the early part of the eighteenth century. It was just one hundred years later, that is in 1809, that those deeds of daring and devotion were achieved in the defiles of the Brenner, which have rendered undying the name and fame of Andreas Hofer.

With all Austria’s arrierreism in politics, she is in the foremost rank of continental nations, as regards the world’s modern civiliser, the Railway. She was next after Belgium in determining upon their construction, and although Prussia anticipated her as regards actual opening, railway works have been accomplished within the Austrian dominions, the like of which cannot be seen within those of her great rival, no matter whether these dominions belong to her de jure divino, or by that of conquest.

To Austria, undoubtedly, belongs the honour of having constructed the first, which until the 18th of August, 1867, was the only iron road traversed by the locomotive through an Alpine pass. At a heavy expense it is true, for the cost of the double line over the Sœmmering was at the rate of £98,000 an English mile. The great line of railway which connects Vienna with its sea port Trieste, now more important and valuable to Austria than ever, is 362 miles long; and at Glognitz, exactly forty-seven miles from Vienna, the pass commences. Although the actual distance from one foot of the pass to the other is not more than sixteen miles, the length of the railway, owing to the numerous twists and zig-zags it was necessary to make to overcome the elevation with gradients that the engine could climb up, is twenty-six miles. Yet, in this short distance, there are no less than twelve tunnels and eleven vaulted galleries, the aggregate length of which is 14,867 feet, or nearly three miles. The longest tunnel—4,695 feet—is at the summit, which is 2,893 feet above the level of the sea. The gradients vary from 1 in 40 for two miles and a-half to 1 in 54 for three miles and a-half. The average gradient is 1 in 47 on the north side, and 1 in 50 on the south. The foot of the mountain is 1,562 feet above the sea. The elevation to overcome was, therefore, only an average of 112 feet to the mile; nevertheless the difficulties in working the traffic have been very great. It was a considerable time before the present form of engine was adopted by M. Engerth, the locomotive engineer of the line. Its total heating surface is 1,660 square feet, its total weight, when filled with water and loaded with fuel, is fifty-five tons and a-half. This unfortunately is a weight most destructive both to rail and to roadway. The cost per train mile run averages 6s. 2d. the English mile down the pass as well as up it, whilst the average cost on the ordinary portions of the line is under 3s. per English mile. The time allowed for passenger trains is one hour and fifty minutes, being an average of fourteen miles an hour; for goods trains, two hours thirty minutes, or at the average rate of about ten miles an hour.

There was until just recently, a race running between the engineers at the Brenner and at the Mont Cenis, and it was, until the beginning of August, 1867, uncertain which of them would have the honour of being the second railway upon which the locomotive had crossed the Alps. But the Brenner has won by a length of eight days. The two lines differ in several respects, both as regard construction and working. The Brenner does not take a portion of the existing road for its road-bed. This is formed in the ordinary mode of construction; the company has made its own bridges, culverts, and viaducts, its own embankments and cuttings, its own tunnels and galleries, and in this way it has succeeded in constructing a railway of much less elevation at its summit than the adjacent carriage roadway. It has done so, however, at great cost, but it is anticipated that the saving in working charges will more than compensate for the additional outlay which this species, as it were, of independent construction has rendered unavoidable. The line will be worked on the ordinary system, that is, with engines and other rolling stock similar to those on the plain, with the exception that the engines must and will be of great additional weight, to give them the power and adhesion required to overcome the very severe gradients they will have to contend against. “The opening of the Brenner Railway,” says the Times, “places not only Austria, but Bavaria and all Southern Germany, almost in contact with Lombardy, Venetia, and all Northern Italy. It recovers all the importance that the Brenner Pass possessed from the remotest Roman and Germanic ages, as the most direct and easy route across the main Alpine chain, as the natural highway from the Valley of the Inn, to that of the Adige, and which constituted it the key to the strong position of the March of Verona, which the Germans, from its erection into an imperial fief, under Otho I, in the 10th century, denominated ‘the Gate of Italy.’”[5]

p14

p15

Previous to describing the Mont Cenis Railway, we will ask the reader to place himself mentally with us in the train belonging to one or other of the two railway companies which, leaving the great British metropolis at four different points, Charing Cross or Cannon Street (South Eastern), Victoria or Ludgate Hill (London, Chatham and Dover), arrives by either route at a point common to both—the Admiralty Pier, Dover, in two hours and five minutes from the time of its departure. The South Eastern Company carries the land mails, both ordinary and extraordinary, as well as the bulk of the passengers; on the other hand, its rival carrying fewer passengers, and the distance being ten miles less, almost invariably arrives first at the Admiralty Pier, and thus enables those whom she (ships, trains, and locomotives are of the feminine gender) conveys, to secure some of the sofas, reclined upon which, the ceremony of seasickness can (as we know well, by great and varied experience) be performed with far greater ease, grace, precision, and satisfaction, than by him or her who is destined to perform it sitting or standing. At the time that the traveller touches terra firma at Calais, he has completed 110 miles of journeying, if he have travelled by the South Eastern Line, ten miles less, if he have committed himself to the London, Chatham and Dover. The original railway distance from Calais to Paris was 236 English miles, but thanks to two shortenings, the first between Creil and Paris, the second between Hazebrouch and Arras, by which latter the detour to the neighbourhood of Lille was avoided, the length was diminished to 203 miles; and now, since the opening of the line between Calais and Boulogne, in April of the present year, the mail trains take this route to and from Paris, by which a further saving of seventeen miles is obtained, making the present distance between Calais and Paris 186 miles.

Our mental traveller having arrived at Paris, will need a pause, and whilst he is supposed to be refreshing himself, with a good dinner, at one of the innumerable restaurants to be met with at every corner, we will ask permission to occupy the time by giving, in the first instance, an epitome of the story of four great giants of modern times—the four longest and most important railways that science, practical skill, and money have as yet created on the European side of the Atlantic; and then we propose to show, by a general reference, how wonderfully and rapidly the railway system has already extended, and still continues to extend, in various parts of the globe. Eventually, most railways will have to yield the palm—at all events, as regards wonderful accomplishment—to the Great Pacific Railway, to which, therefore, we beg leave to accord precedence in our descriptions.

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CHAPTER II.

UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD—SOUTH AUSTRIAN AND ALTA ITALIA—PARIS, LYONS, AND MEDITERRANEAN—ORLEANS—MILEAGE, COST, AND RECEIPTS OF FRENCH RAILWAYS—LONDON TRAFFIC—LONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY.

From the day that the Americans became masters of California, they had always had it in their heads to join it by the best possible roadway to the old states of the Union; and it was a grand conception, for the distance between the railways of the valleys of the Mississippi and the Missouri, that here had stretched their arms outwards towards the West, were still separated from the Pacific by fully 2,000 miles—as near as can be the distance which intervenes between St. Petersburg and Lisbon. Fremont—then captain, now general—a few years back nearly President of the Republic—son-in-law of Benton, one of America’s most worthy sons—traversed, with a few companions, in 1847, the desert that led to the Rocky Mountains, found out the passes through them, as well as those of the Sierra Nevada (the Snowy Mountain), and arrived in California just as his countrymen were taking possession of its territory. It was at the same time that the first golden nugget was discovered. The news spread, and a party of emigrants followed Fremont’s footmarks. Those who arrived in California left the bones of many of their comrades to whiten and then to moulder in the desert, and it was nearly six months before the survivors reached the El dorado. Similar casualties beset the parties that followed the first gold-seeking pioneers, for the same spirit which makes every American believe that he may be President of the United States (therefore no American ever commits suicide), made each survivor of each party, as its ranks were thinned by famine, fever, and the attacks of the Red Indians, believe that he, at all events, would be spared and arrive at last at his destination.

But some did arrive, and by degrees the perils of the route diminished, although they have never, even at this day, altogether ceased. In less than ten years from the date that Fremont first set out on his expedition, a regular Overland Mail had been established, which completed its journey between San Francisco and St. Joseph, both for passengers and despatches, in three weeks. A grand total distance of fully 2,000 miles, on the average 100 miles in each twenty-four hours, of course some days more some days less, for independent of nature’s road on the desert, no less than two mountain passes had to be surmounted, and on these there was not, in the first instance, even a bridle-way. This pace, however, was considered too slow, at all events as regards correspondence. The “Pony Express” was thereupon inaugurated in 1860, by which time the system of eastern railways had extended 400 miles more towards the west than what they were in 1858, consequently diminishing roadway distance to 1,600 miles. This ground was got over in the marvellously brief time of six days, or at the go-a-head, we might almost add “helter skelter,” rate of 265 miles a-day! The rider performed no greater journey each day than his horse. The latter set off on a gallop and never ceased his fifteen to twenty miles, except when, as occasionally, although not frequently, happened, Red Skin stopped the way, sent the rider to his long account, and then quietly rode off on the dead man’s horse, which he claimed as his trophy. On the 12th of November, 1860, the courier rode into San Francisco with news from Europe of no longer date than the previous 21st of October. Even this speed did not satisfy; the telegraph was therefore laid the whole way across the American continent; and now, thanks to the Atlantic Cable, and to difference of longitude, the merchant of London can tell his correspondent at San Francisco, events that have happened twelve hours before the same hour has arrived in California. Unfortunately, however, for California, notwithstanding that the normal speed of electro-telegraphy is 280,000 miles a second, she is unable to let us know her news here in less than some twenty-four hours after its occurrence.

In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Act of Congress for “The Union Pacific Railroad Company.” Forthwith its works were commenced. Where? At two points:—The eastern, at Omaha, near the confluence of the Missouri River, with that of the Platte, or Nebraska, in the state of Nebraska, latitude 41° north, longitude 19° west, of Washington. The line follows the course of the river to the Rocky Mountains, which it climbs up until not far from the summit of the Bridger Pass, due west of Omaha. A tunnel not more than 500 yards in length carries the line into Utah. In this territory it passes by Salt Lake and Salt Lake City, head-quarters of Brigham Young and his Mormons; thence to the state of Nevada, as rich in silver-yielding mines as those in California are in supplying gold. No wonder, then, that its capital—Carson City—should now have a population of 15,000, although, seven years ago, there was not even one inhabitant to boast of. At the passage of the Sierra Nevada there will also be a tunnel 500 yards long. Thence to Sacramento, and from there, it will wend its way close to the river of the same name, and find itself at San Francisco. This is not only its extreme western, but it is also its extreme southern point, for, in coming west from the Bridger Pass, the latitude changes from 41° to 38° 20″; and it is from San Francisco that the western works commence and proceed easterly to meet, at some point as yet uncertain, those advancing in the opposite direction. They are already at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains, 500 miles from Omaha; and on the Pacific side, they have reached the western slopes of the Sierra. Therefore, already more than a third of the whole line is accomplished. On the plain, progress is made at a rate that would astonish the European engineer, for the Americans are satisfied with the road bed such as nature has made it; and thus it is no uncommon thing to lay 2½ miles of the railway in a single day! As the road advances, so do the locomotive and the train, but not always with the most perfect safety, for the Indians have now learned to do wholesale what they only did isolately upon the riders of the Pony Expresses,—witness the following paragraph from the Times of no later date than August 31 of the present year:—

“A correspondent of the New York Tribune says that the Indians are out in strong force, and have begun the war in earnest. A strong force of savages laid ties on the track of the Union Pacific Railroad, six miles west of Plum Creek, and a valuable freight train was ambushed and upset. The engineer, fireman, two breakman, and three telegraph repairers were killed. The Indians burned eight cars, and completely destroyed a great deal of valuable merchandise, valued at 30,000 dollars. The savages burned the train, killed and scalped seven persons, and threw the slaughtered bodies into the flames of the burning cars. The conductor of the train narrowly escaped, and rushing back along the track, met another freight train, which he signalled. The train was stopped, and he was taken on board, after which the train returned to Plum Creek. The affair has created great excitement, and there is a general alarm along the line of the railroad, now that the Indians have discovered the means of arresting its traffic.”

No doubt the alarm is general along the line, but it will die out, for as a writer in the Revue des deux Mondes, to whom we are indebted for many of the facts we have just stated, says:—“En beaucoup d’endroits, le terrain a êté si bien nivelé par la nature, qu’ ou ne voit de quel coté il penche, et que les rails se posent sans aucune fouille sur le sol. Pas de grandes riviers a franchir, pas de torrens impetueux a dompter. Le seul enemi de la voie, est que sur quelques points, heureusement isolés, du desert, ou manquent l’eau et le bois, domine le peau-rouge, vagabond, et chasseur, adversaire-né du colon stable: mais le bois et l’eau, on les apporte, et quant a l’enfant des Prairies, il disparaitra et s’eteindra, bientot, devant l’homme civilisé. C’est la, une des lois fatales du progres; elle se verifie partout ou se presente l’Europeen.” Too true.

And who are making the railway? On the East they are all Irishmen. As each half-mile of it, or so, is made, they march along with it towards the West, with their wives, their children, their wooden houses rolled along on wheels, and their domestic animals—cats, dogs, goats—the more ambitious, have occasionally a cow, the richest of all can sport a little pony. When the day comes for the meeting of the two railway ends, the Irishmen will find that the fellow-labourers who have come to greet them are to a man “John Chinaman,” for none others work on the Pacific side of the railway.

Its total cost is to be £30,000,000 sterling—£16,000 a mile. Of the gross sum, one-third is guaranteed by the United States Government in money, in addition to the concession of immense tracts of land on each side of the railway. The state of Utah, or rather the individual Mormons, are good for £4,000,000, and private speculation furnishes the remainder. Of the mighty company which carries out these works, General John A. Dix (now United States Minister in Paris) is president; and in Colonel Heine (an attaché of the Embassy) the Company has a warm, zealous, and active friend. We have said already that a third of the railway is already accomplished. By 1870, probably—by 1871, certainly—it will be finished in its entire length. New York will then certainly associate itself with Jeddo and Canton by this route; but not so London, Paris, and other parts of Europe. The writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes says, that, on the completion of the railway, Europe will only be one month from Canton. Let us see:—London to New York, ten days; New York to San Francisco, 3,000 miles, at 20 miles an hour (all stops and delays included), 150 hours—six days and a quarter; San Francisco is from Canton, even by great circle sailing, exactly 6,900 nautical miles. No paddle-wheel steamer could take coals for such a voyage; a screw vessel of very large size, but depending mainly upon her sails for her speed, might make twelve, but very probably would not average more than ten, knots an hour, yet, at the former rate, her passage would be twenty-five days—total, forty-one days and a quarter; at ten knots an hour, the passage would be nearly twenty-nine days, or a total of forty-five days. The Mail now goes from London to Canton in fifty-two days; in 1871 the journey will be six or seven days shorter. The route to Jeddo viâ San Francisco will be quicker than that viâ Suez by seven or eight days, even under circumstances the most favourable for the latter route. By great circle sailing, San Francisco is distant from Jeddo 5,600 knots, and it is also eleven degrees farther to the north than Canton. These eleven degrees of north add 600 miles more in favour of San Francisco.

The longest of all European railways is nearly half Italian, and a little more than half “South Austrian.” It is called in France “Sud, Autrichienne et Haute Italie.” In Italy the two last words are converted into “Alta Italia.” The total length is now 2,565 English miles, of which the South Austrian portion measures 1,349, and the Italian 1,216. The two next longest railways of Europe are French. The Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company has a length of railway, in France, of 2,234 miles, and in 1864, it adopted a translitoral little son, which is known by the name of the “Algerian Railways.” At present the gentle youth is of modest proportions, only thirty-one miles open for traffic, eighty-one to be opened in the present year; and of the remaining 264 which are to constitute its full grown mileage (376 miles), little more work than “etudes preliminaries” has been bestowed upon them. At the period of the greatest growth of the Algerian railway, it will never be more than a pigmy as compared with its adopting parent.

The railway that in mileage comes next in succession, is the Orleans Company. Its length is 2,052 miles. The last of the four railway giants, is our own English giant, the London and North-Western. Now, although the length of our countryman is the least of all—only 1,320 miles—it will nevertheless be seen hereafter, that in its other dimensions it is in most respects superior, in none inferior, to its continental brethren, just as the late Mr. Thomas Sayers was less in height and length of arm than Heenan, nevertheless, in the long run, he managed to beat him.

The two extreme western points of the mighty system of the South Austrian and Alta Italia are at Susa, at the foot of the Mont Cenis Pass of the Alps, and Cuneo at the foot of that of the Col di Tenda. Its two eastern are Vienna, and still farther (by means of its Hungarian net-work to the southward of Vienna), Pesth. Its northern is Kutzen, about a hundred miles to the south-east of Munich. Its southern, Pistoja, is twenty-two miles to the north-east of Florence. It possesses railways across two of the passes of the Alps, the Sœmmering and the Brenner. Its stations are at Genoa, Turin, Milan, Innspruch, capital of the Tyrol, Verona and Venice, Trieste, Vienna, and Pesth. It is equally fitted (as it has proved itself to be) for a great military railway, and for one to be devoted only to commercial and industrial development, but it has its skeleton in its closet,—it is not at Florence, capital of United Italy, nor is there prospect of its being there, except by a combination which shall unite with it the whole of the Strade Ferrate Romane, of which some particulars will be given hereafter.

The course and direction of the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean, of the Orleans, and of the London and North-Western Companies, are, as there can be no doubt, sufficiently known to our readers to render description of them unnecessary. The great port of the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean is Marseilles, the Liverpool of the Mediterranean, 537 miles from Paris, and 833 from London. The chief port of the Orleans Company is Bordeaux, 366 miles from Paris, 662 from London.

Before proceeding farther, let us refer, very briefly, to the early history of railways in France.

Neither the French Government nor the French people seemed to feel much interest about their construction until long subsequent to the opening of several hundred miles of them, both in Belgium and in Germany. The nation, was not, however, altogether ignorant of their existence, for tramways had been used in the Mineral Districts of St. Etienne, and near to the Banks of the Loire, for many years previously. They were, for the most part, worked by horses, but in some few cases by locomotives of the rudest construction, just as happened in our own coal districts in the North of England, previous to the epoch of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Dr. Lardner, in his Railway Economy, says that “to M. Emile Pereire is due the honour of having first impressed upon his countrymen the advantages which must arise from the adoption of this mode of transport.” With much difficulty he succeeded in forming a Company for making the short line between Paris and St. Germain. The Act for its construction was obtained in July 1835, and it was opened for traffic in December 1837. It was originally, in part, worked as a locomotive line, and partly on what was known as the atmospheric system, but for the last five or six years the traffic is carried exclusively by means of the locomotive. Its length is thirteen miles, and it now forms one of the “Lignes de Banlieue,” of the Western of France Railway Company. (Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest.)

But it was not until 1837 that the importance of France having a net-work throughout the Kingdom was appreciated. In that year a Royal Commission Avas appointed, which made its report in 1838, but owing to internal jealousies and other causes, the recommendations of the report were not adopted, and the Government of the day had to submit to defeat upon them.

In 1838, what is now the Great Orleans Company obtained its first concession, which was for a Railway to extend from Paris to Orleans. Powerful and elongated as the Company now is, it had, in its early career, to undergo much financial difficulty and embarrassment, and it was only owing to the Government coming to its aid, by guaranteeing four per cent. on its capital, that the Company was able to complete and to open the railway for traffic.

A concession was given to the Paris and Rouen Company in 1841. The line was opened for traffic on the 9th of May, 1843.

The Fundamental Law for the construction of French Railways, and for the subsequent administrative surveillance of them by the Government, was passed on the 11th of June, 1842.

By this law France was to possess seven main arterial lines of railway, all of which were to start from Paris as the concentric point. The first was to take the direction towards Belgium, so as to meet the railways then opened in that kingdom, approaching the French frontier. The second, part of which was to be in common with the first, was to proceed towards Calais or Dunkirk; Calais was selected as the most convenient for traffic with England, and the line to Dunkirk, twenty-five miles long, which branches off at Hazebrouck, was not constructed for several years after the main line had been completed. We remember Hazebrouck, a mere road-side stopping place, but it has of late become a first-class junction station, for in addition to the Dunkirk line diverging here, it is also the junction (bifurcation) at which the line leading to Lille, and to Brussels separates from those that run to Amiens, one viâ Douai (the old road), and the other, viâ Bethune, constructed to shorten the distance between Paris and Calais by twenty miles, and also to give railway access to the recently-opened collieries in the vicinity of Bethune, Nœux, Chocques, &c.

The third arterial line was to run towards the ports on the Bay of Biscay, from the Loire to the Gironde. The fourth was to extend to Bayonne and thence, eventually, to the Spanish frontier. The fifth was to be common to the fourth, and then to follow a course tending towards the Mediterranean, passing through Toulouse and finally arriving at Perpignan, close to the Spanish frontier, and at the foot of the Pyrenees, not much farther removed from the Mediterranean than Bayonne is from the Bay of Biscay. It is but within the last few months that this line has been completed in its entire extent; the line to Perpignan having only been opened for traffic in September last.

The sixth was the great and important arterial line from Paris through Dijon, Chalons, Macon, Lyons, and Avignon, to Marseilles. The seventh, or last, was the important strategic and commercial line that was to connect Paris with Strasburg and the Rhine.

Of course, since the first conception of these seven arterial lines, modifications in the exact direction of several of them have taken place, but in the main they follow the courses originally proposed and afterwards decided upon. It will be unnecessary to record the various difficulties, financial and administrative, which attended the construction of the first net-work of French railways. Suffice it, therefore, to say, that by the end of 1847, 1,750 miles had been completed, and that by 1853, the essential parts of the whole system were finished. These have been followed by the “new” net-work, and the total mileage of French railways at present is 14,382 kilometres, or, 8,989 English miles.

This digression finished, we proceed to state the cost at which each of the four European leviathans of the railway world have been constructed. The capital expenditure of the South Austrian and Alta Italia, up to the 31st December, 1866, was £41,763,301, or at the rate of £18,200 a mile. Capital expenditure on the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company is nearly double that of the South Austrian and Alta Italia, being £80,922,000, which brings the cost per mile to £36,218. This expenditure is exclusive of £1,740,202, upon the Algerian lines, making the company’s total capital expenditure to the 31st December, 1866, £82,662,202.

As the total length of French railways was, on the 31st December, 1866, 14,382 kilometres, or 8,989 miles, and the total capital expenditure upon them to that date was £306,089,000, it follows that the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company is one-fourth in length, all but twenty-eight miles, of the total railway mileage of France, but its gross cost has exceeded one-fourth of the total cost of French railways by £4,399,500, and its cost per mile, being £36,218, it has exceeded their average cost per mile (£34,051) by £2,167.

The capital expenditure of the Orleans Company has been £42,944,862, or at the rate of £20,928 a mile, which is £13,123 per mile below the average cost per mile of French railways. In addition, the company is proprietor of the coal and iron mines, and the Iron Works of Aubin, at a cost of £671,216. 194,694 tons of coal were raised there in 1866, of which 43,200 were used by the company’s locomotives, 16,000 were sold to the public, and the balance was consumed in the iron works, which manufactured 22,021 of rails during the year.

The total expenditure on capital account of all the railways of the United Kingdom up to the 1st January, 1866, was £455,478,143.

On the London and North-Western the expenditure on capital account has been £45,576,361, but a subdivision of this capital by the mileage worked by the company would not represent the cost per mile of the railway as the company is subscriber to the capital of other companies (some of which are worked by it and some are not) for £3,556,969, but this amount hardly represents a tenth of the capital expended by those companies. There is no doubt however that the cost per mile of those lines for which the capital was exclusively provided by the London and North-Western Company exceeds £50,000 a mile.

The gross receipts from traffic for the year were, South Austrian, £2,957,713, Alta Italia, £1,738,202, total of the Company, £4,695,915; average weekly receipts, £90,306; per mile per annum £1,932. Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean, total traffic £8,105,776; average weekly receipts, £155,691; per mile per annum, £3,640. As the total traffic receipts of French railways was, approximately (but the figures are very nearly exact) £24,140,000, it follows that the receipts of this company exceeded one-third of the total railway receipts of the empire by £101,110, and that its average weekly receipts per mile exceed the average weekly receipts per mile of all France (£2,865) by £955.

The traffic receipts of the Orleans Company, for 1866, were £4,401,894; average weekly receipts, £94,267; per mile per annum, £2,189, or £496 per mile per week below the receipts per mile per week of the total French railway system. London and North-Western, £6,312,056; average weekly receipts, £120,400; per mile per annum, £4,782.

Owing to the war in Italy in 1866, the tables connected with the passenger traffic of the Alta Italia are defective, but of the 7,858,893 passengers carried on the South Austrian in 1866, 1 per cent. only were first class, but they yielded 5 per cent. of the passenger receipts; 12 per cent. in number were of the second class, they yielded 19 per cent. of the receipts; the third class were 87 per cent. in number and 76 per cent. in receipts.

The number of passengers carried on the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean was 18,443,597, of which about 6 per cent. in number were first class, 13½ second, and 80½ third.

This total number represents between a fourth and a fifth of the gross number carried in France during 1866—about eighty-four millions—and is in no way in accordance with its proportion, either as regards its gross receipts or its gross mileage, the former being, as just stated, more than a third, and the latter one-fourth of the total railway receipts and mileage of the empire; thus showing that the principal traffic of the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Company is long traffic; in this respect very strikingly resembling the traffic of the London and North-Western Railway Company. According to the testimony of M. Charles La Vollée, furnished in his very interesting work, “Les Chemins de Fer en France,” Paris, 1866, the average distance travelled by each passenger on French railways in 1865, was 40 kilometres (25 miles); average distance of a ton of merchandise, 140 kilometres (87½ miles); but as the average price of passenger travelling of all classes in France is only 5½ centimes per kilometre, equal to 9½ centimes per mile: of goods per ton, 6½ centimes per kilometre, equal to 10½ centimes per mile, it follows that each passenger and each ton of goods travels on the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway nearly double the average distance on all French railways. According to the investigations of M. La Vollée, the average cost of all three classes of passengers in England is 14½ centimes, or 1⅜d. per mile; goods precisely the same per ton. This gentleman makes the following calculation with regard to the saving effected in consequence of the substitution of railways for diligences in travelling. The latter, he says, sped their way at the rate of 6¼ miles an hour. Railways go at the rate of 25. For each of the 80,000,000 who were carried on French railways in 1865, there is a saving of 10 sous an hour, equal to 112,500,000 francs, or £4,500,000, and upon the transport of goods there would he a saving of ten millions sterling, supposing that all goods now carried by railway were to be carried by road.

The construction of railways cheaply in France is now occupying attention. A railway on this system was opened on the 25th of August last—the line from Fougères to Vitré, on the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest. Its length is 23 miles, and it has been constructed for £100,000, or at the rate of £4,348 a mile, notwithstanding the fact that it is carried through a difficult country, necessitating numerous heavy works, the greatest of which is a viaduct constructed of granite 120 yards long, and 22 yards high. The rails are Vignoles pattern, 60 lbs. to the yard. The above price includes rolling stock, shops, and their equipment, &c. But everybody received “argent sonnant” as the works progressed, and the line was not opened until everything had been settled up and paid for. This is one of the secrets appertaining to the economic construction of railways.

On the Orleans Railway, 9,630,460 passengers were conveyed in 1866: of which 7½ per cent. in number were first class, 14½ per cent. second, and 78 third.

Before quitting the subject of French traffic receipts, a word must be said about a little railway which appertains to the most stately city in France—Lyons—until a few years ago, when Marseilles superseded it,[6] the second in commercial importance, the second also, not long back, in revolutionary susceptibility, yielding only in this respect to the once great head quarters of rebellion, barricades, and insurrection, Paris. As it is some years since our last visit to Lyons, an accident alone put us upon the track of this railway. We looked for some account of it in that great compendium of hotel-keepers’ advertisements, Bradshaw’s Continental Guide, (lucus, &c.), but, of course, not a word is said about it, and we are bound to record the same omission in the (with this exception) admirable “Indicateur des Chemins de Fer, et de la Navigation”, published weekly by Messrs. Chaix & Co., of Paris. Thanks, however, to “my Murray,” we discover the “Lyons-Croix Rousse” runs from the heart of the city to the Croix Rousse, the former hotbed of insurrection, and “inhabited principally by silk-weavers who live in densely crowded narrow streets, where twelve to twenty families are piled, one above the other, in the lofty houses.” But these revolutionary silk-weavers must be a grand moving population, for although the line is stated in the Moniteur des Interets Materiels, a weekly journal which treats, according to the words of its title, upon “tout ce qui a rapport au bien-être general, hormis la politique,” to be only 587 yards long, it had a daily traffic in 1866 of 666 francs, equal to 243,093 francs, or £9,723 per annum! The company has paid off all its debenture debt, and its modest share capital receives the benefit of all profits. What they are, however, is a mystery, for the directors have, in their wisdom and discretion, never thought fit to publish them.

Our Gallic neighbours lodge their Sovereign, his Empress, and his suite, in palaces replete with magnificence and luxury, and when he travels, they are equally mindful of his dignity and of his comfort. Witness the following description of the imperial train in which the Emperor and the Empress went from Paris to Salzburg to visit the Emperor and Empress of Austria, in August last. It may well he said that it exceeds in comfort and elegance any previous equipment of a similar nature. It consists of nine carriages, communicating with each other by tastefully decorated bridges. In the middle is a handsome sitting-room, furnished with chairs, ottomans, pictures, clocks, and chandeliers. On one side of this room is the dining-room, and on the other the Emperor’s study. In the middle of the dining-room there is a table capable of being extended or contracted at pleasure, with easy chairs placed parallel to the sides of the carriage. The Emperor’s study contains an elegant writing-table, a clock in the style of the renaissance, a thermometer, a barometer, and a telegraphic apparatus, by means of which telegraphic communication is established with the several apartments of the various court officials travelling with His Majesty. Next to the study is the bed-room of the Emperor and Empress, with two beds placed transversely against the sides of the carriage. Two dressing-rooms are attached to the bed-room. The remaining carriages consist of a kitchen, wine cellar, and the apartments of the imperial suite. There is also a conservatory for the choicest flowers.

Our own gracious Sovereign travels in her journeys to and from Scotland with great comfort, but without the extent of magnificence above depicted.

Proportioned to the passenger traffic of other English railways, the London and North-Western Company is deficient as regards numbers, for although it has on its system Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and almost all the leading manufacturing bee-hives in the north of England, it is the sole railway having its terminus in London, that does not encourage short local and Sunday traffic. Nevertheless the number of passengers carried on the London and North-Western in 1866 was 20,811,173, which however is less than a tenth (excluding the holders of 97,147 periodical tickets) of the total number (251,862,715) conveyed on all the railways of the United Kingdom in 1865. The returns before us do not enable us to state the relative proportions of classes of passengers carried by the London and North-Western, but, at all events, we know that they exceed two-thirds of the population of Great Britain and Ireland, which, according to the estimate of the Registrar-General, published a few days ago, was 30,157,239 in June, 1867. The estimated population of London and of its suburbs, comprised within a circle of twelve miles from the General Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, is, at present, 3,521,267, which is more than the population of half-a-dozen German Principalities;[7] more than half that of Ireland,[8] and equal to that of all Scotland. Those desirous of knowing the component parts of the metropolitan population, and how it is distributed over its area of 687 square miles, are referred to the recently published vigorous and able statistical vindication of the City of London,[9] by its distinguished and learned Chamberlain, Mr. Benjamin Scott.

Here let us indicate a few facts illustrating the motive habits of the immense London population. In the twelve months ending the 30th of June, 1867, the number of passengers conveyed on the Metropolitan Railway—4½ miles in length—were 22,458,067, or 1,646,894 more than on the whole system of the London and North-Western Railway in 1866. In the same twelve months, the London General Omnibus Company, which owns about seven-eighths of those vehicles that ply in the metropolis, carried 42,995,910. These, independent of steam-boat passengers, the number of which we are not able to state, our application to the secretary of one of the companies for information not having been replied to; independent also of the persons who travelled in the 6,000 cabs that are licensed for London, and independent, finally, of the persons conveyed in the innumerable vehicles which are unceasingly circulating during about sixteen hours every day through every portion of the great metropolis.[10]

Mr. Watkin, M.P., the chairman of the South-Eastern Railway, gave, at the recent meeting of the shareholders of that company, a very striking illustration of the motive habits of the metropolitan population. During the half-year ending the 30th June, 1867, the total number of passengers conveyed on the South-Eastern Railway was 9,700,000, but of these 7,200,000 came into or went out of its three London stations (Charing Cross, Cannon Street, and London Bridge—the traffic of the last immensely diminished since the opening of the two first), yet the total length of the South-Eastern is 330 miles, and in the usual proportion of stations to mileage on English railways (one for each 3¼ miles) the number of stations is 101. Although we have not the exact figures before us, we believe the same proportions, as regards passenger traffic, holds good on the London, Brighton and South Coast, the South-Western and the Great Western Railways, and nearly so on the Great Eastern and the Great Northern.

The rolling stock of the South Austrian and Alta Italia consists of 963 locomotives, 2,663 passenger carriages, in which are included 11 for the exclusive use of royal personages, 19,182 waggons, in which are included 57 for the service of the Post. Its total mileage of train engines 10,451,870. The amount of rolling stock of the Paris, Lyons, and of the Orleans Companies is not stated in their reports, but the total engine mileage of the former company in 1866 was 17,271,502 miles, of which 9,656,690 were for passenger trains, and 7,614,812 were for goods, cattle, and coal trains; of the Orleans Company 10,715,458, of which 5,878,010 miles were for passenger trains, and 4,837,448 for goods, cattle, and coal trains.

We are not able to state the total mileage of the trains of French railways, but it will be seen by reference to the Annuaire des Postes de l’Empire Francais, published on the 1st of January, 1867, a work analagous in its character to the Annual Reports of the Postmaster-General of England, that the postal service of France upon railways was, in 1865, 27,730,000 kilometres, equal to 17,331,250 miles. The British Post Office does not avail itself of all the railways of the United Kingdom for the transmission of mails. Thus the total mileage of British railways on the 1st of January, 1866, was 13,289 miles, but the Post Office only sent mail bags over about 12,000 of them. The Post Office Railway Service is 60,000 miles a day, equal (deducting for Sundays) to 18,780,000 per annum, or about 1,450,000 per annum more than the postal mileage on French railways.

Before proceeding to describe the present position of the London and North-Western Company as regards locomotive and rolling stock, a short epitome of what it was twenty years ago, may not prove uninteresting.

On the 30th June, 1847, the total length of railway worked by the company was 670 miles. The number of its locomotive engines was 504, or an engine for about each three-quarters of a mile of railway. The engine mileage was—

For passenger trains

4,649,556

For goods trains

2,882,674

————

Total

7,532,230

On the 30th of June, 1847, there were 1,018 passenger carriages, and so little encouragement was given by the company at that time to travellers of the humbler classes, that out of the 1,018 only 75 were third class. The Company had also 8 travelling post offices, and 13 post office tenders, 210 horse boxes, 183 guards’ break and parcels vans, 4,874 goods waggons, 612 cattle and sheep trucks, 653 coal and coke waggons. The total number of passengers conveyed in the year 1848, was 6,001,576. Tons of goods conveyed (estimated) 1,811,000. At that period the conveyance of coal by railway was in its infancy.

On the 31st December, 1866, the London and North-Western Company possessed 1,347 locomotive engines, which is rather more than an engine a mile, the average for the whole kingdom being just over one-half of one per mile. It had 2,237 passenger carriages, 46 travelling post offices and post office tenders, 408 horse boxes, 418 guards’ break and parcel vans, 22,483 goods waggons, 1,703 cattle and sheep trucks, 2,069 coal and coke waggons, and for shunting carriages and waggons, and other work at stations, no less than 619 horses, all of good breeds, well-fed, intelligent, and well-tutored.

Its engines ran, in 1866, 21,637,163 miles, of which 10,613,324 were for passenger trains, and 11,023,839 for goods and minerals: average mileage of each engine for the year, 16,063; per day, of 365 to the year, 44, but, as the average number of working days of an engine in a year is about 250, the average mileage of the year, so divided, is 64. This seems an extremely low average. Besides the passengers already referred to, the company conveyed 15,425,119 tons of goods and minerals. These exceed the amount carried on the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean by 1,803,405 tons, and they are very nearly three times as much as those conveyed by the Orleans Company (5,216,879 tons). Although the length of the London and North-Western system is not at present more than a tenth of the total mileage length of the United Kingdom, its receipts are a little more than a sixth of those earned by all British and Irish railways. Its income, in fact, is just three times what Lord Macaulay tells us, in the fourth volume of his History of England, was the total national revenue at the time that William III. ascended the English throne.

CHAPTER III.

RAILWAYS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM—COAL AND IRON.

Thanks to the very valuable tables of railway statistics prepared by Mr. John Cleghorn, the secretary of the North-Eastern Railway, and compiled from the returns of the Board of Trade for the years from 1859 to 1865, both inclusive, we are able to present to our readers, in an abbreviated shape, a number of details respecting the railways of the United Kingdom, of a very interesting and instructive character.

Prefacing them with the remark that on the 31st December, 1852, the capital invested in British railways was £264,165,672, yielding a gross revenue of £15,710,554, we proceed to state that on the 31st of December, 1859, the amount of capital paid up was £334,362,928, and that there were then 10,002 miles opened for traffic. The number of passengers carried in 1859, exclusive of journeys made by 49,856 holders of periodical tickets, were 149,757,294, of whom 19,204,151 were first class, 44,351,903 were second, and 86,201,240 were third. The receipts from passengers, luggage, parcels, horses, carriages, dogs, and mails, were £12,537,493. Merchandise, 22,005,737 tons; minerals, 51,756,782 tons; live stock, 12,805,613 head. Receipts from these sources, £13,206,009. Total receipts, £25,743,502. The number of miles run by passenger trains was 49,753,344; by those for goods, minerals, and cattle, 43,762,452; total, 93,516,796. The Board of Trade did not furnish returns of working expenses for 1863, but we know that their proportions to receipts were about 45 per cent.

On the 31st of December, 1860, the capital paid up was £348,130,327. Miles opened for traffic, 10,433. Passengers conveyed in 1860 (exclusive of 47,894 holders of periodical tickets), 163,435,678, of whom 20,625,851 were first class, 49,041,814 were second, and 93,768,013 were third. Receipts from passenger traffic, &c., £13,085,756. Merchandise, 29,470,931 tons; minerals, 60,386,788 tons; live stock, 12,083,503 head. Receipts from these sources, £14,680,966. Total receipts, £27,766,622. The miles run by passenger trains were 52,816,579; by those for goods, minerals, and cattle, 49,427,113; total, 102,243,692. The total working expenses were £13,196,368; their proportion to receipts, 47 per cent.

On the 31st December, 1861, the capital paid up was £362,327,338. Miles opened for traffic, 10,869. Passengers conveyed in 1861 (exclusive of 52,079 holders of periodical tickets), 173,721,139, of whom 21,917,936 were first class, 51,146,672 second, and 100,656,531 third. Receipts from passenger traffic, &c., £13,326,475. Merchandise, 30,638,893 tons; minerals, 63,604,434 tons; live stock, 12,870,683 head. Receipts from these sources, £15,238,880. Total receipts, £28,565,355. The miles run by passenger trains were 54,055,476; by those for goods, minerals, and cattle, 51,085,964; total, 105,141,440. Total working expenses, £13,843,337; their proportion to receipts, 48½ per cent.

On the 31st December, 1862, the capital paid up was £385,218,438. Miles opened for traffic, 11,551. Passengers conveyed in 1862 (exclusive of 56,656 holders of periodical tickets), 180,429,071, of whom 23,105,351 were first class, 51,869,239 second, and 105,454,481 third. Receipts from passenger traffic, &c., £13,911,985. Merchandise, 30,256,913 tons; minerals, 63,405,864 tons; live stock, 12,885,003 head. Receipts from these sources, £15,216,573. Total receipts, £29,128,558. The miles run by passenger trains were 57,542,831; by those for goods, minerals and cattle, 50,518,966; total, 108,061,797. Total working expenses, £14,268,409; their proportion to receipts 49 per cent.

On the 31st December, 1863, the capital paid up was £404,215,802. Miles opened for traffic, 12,322. Passengers conveyed in 1863 (exclusive of 64,391 holders of periodical tickets), 204,635,075, of whom 26,086,008 were first class, 57,476,669 second, and 121,072,398 third. Receipts from passenger traffic, &c., £14,521,528. Merchandise, 32,517,247 tons; minerals, 68,043,154 tons; live stock, 13,029,675 head. Receipts from these sources, £16,663,869. Total receipts, £31,156,397. The miles run by passenger trains were 61,032,143; by those for goods, minerals and cattle, &c., 55,560,018; total, 116,592,161. Total working expenses, £15,027,234; their proportion to receipts 48·23 per cent.

On the 31st December, 1864, the capital paid up was £425,719,613. Miles opened for traffic, 12,789. Passengers in 1864 (exclusive of 76,499 holders of periodical tickets), 229,272,165, of whom 27,701,415 were first class, 65,269,169 second, and 136,301,581 third. Receipts from passenger traffic, &c., £15,684,040. Merchandise, 34,914,913 tons; minerals, 75,445,781 tons; live stock, 13,673,786 head. Receipts from these sources, £18,331,524. Total receipts, £34,015,564. The miles run by passenger trains were 66,555,219; by those for goods, minerals and cattle, 62,575,724; total, 129,130,943. Total working expenses, £16,000,308; their proportion to receipts, 47·03 per cent.

On the 31st December, 1865, the capital paid up was £455,478,143. Miles opened for traffic, 13,289. Passengers conveyed in 1865 (exclusive of 97,147 holders of periodical tickets), 251,862,715, of whom 29,663,205 were first class, 70,783,241 second, and 151,416,269 third. Receipts from passenger traffic, &c., £16,572,051. Merchandise, 36,787,638 tons; minerals, 77,805,786 tons; live stock, 14,530,937 head. Receipts from these sources, £19,317,475. Total receipts, £35,890,073. The miles run by passenger trains were 71,206,818; by those for goods, minerals and cattle, 68,320,309; total, 139,527,127. Total working expenses, £17,149,073; their proportion to receipts, 48 per cent.

The length of the railways in Ireland is 1,948 miles. In Scotland it is about 2,350 miles, with gross traffic receipts of about £4,200,000, whilst the income derived from Irish railways did not exceed £1,800,000 in 1866. Thus the mileage of the Scotch railways is about a sixth of the total mileage of the United Kingdom; its receipts about a ninth, the total amount of British railway receipts for 1866, being about £37,800,000.[11] The proportions for Ireland are about a seventh of the total mileage—less than a twentieth of the total receipts. There are 35 separate Boards of Railway Directors in the sister kingdom, an average of 55½ miles of railway for each Board to attend to, but, inasmuch as the aggregate length of the nine longest Irish railways is 1,354 miles, it follows that the average length of each of the remaining 26 companies’ lines is not quite 23 miles. Each company has, besides its separate Board of Directors, its separate Secretary, separate Traffic Manager, separate Engineer, separate Locomotive Superintendent, and separate Accountant. Could the London and North-Western manage to sub-divide itself after the fashion of Irish Railway Companies, it would require a staff of 73 of every one of these officers. It is to be deplored that railway animosity[12] is, in its sphere, as intense in Ireland as that which has so-called religion, for its basis. Both inflict a fearful amount of injury upon the material interests and development of the country.

One of the most objectionable features in Irish railway management is the high rates of fares charged to passengers, but especially to those of the third class; in fact rendering third class carriages in a great measure unavailable for the persons for whose use they were specially intended by the Legislature. We are happy, however, to perceive a better, a larger, and a more liberal view is beginning to be taken in Ireland on this subject, for at the meeting of the shareholders of the Midland Great Western Railway—the second of Irish railways in extent and importance, the Chairman made lengthened reference to the subject. “It was,” said Mr. Ralph Cusack, “a bold policy to adopt a scale of fares unusually low, to establish a system of excursion trains every week to and from distant points, and to hold out special inducements to the very humblest classes to avail themselves of the facilities of railway travelling.” This policy, nevertheless, was adopted, but it will not be matter of surprise that it did not find favour at the Boards of Direction of other Companies, it being alleged to be totally unsuited to the circumstances of Ireland, even where the population is numerous and tolerably prosperous. The result, however, has been that, notwithstanding peculiar difficulties arising from the embarrassed circumstances of the railway previous to the present directors coming into office, the experiment has already been successful, and will be more so. As the chairman truly said, “people require to be educated in travelling, and that could only be done by holding out inducements that would draw the masses to the railways.” It is to be hoped that the thirty-four other boards of directors will adopt this liberal and enlightened policy. It will, we are convinced, prove alike beneficial to shareholders, and to the material interests of the country.

The Board of Trade did not obtain returns of rolling stock from the companies until the year 1860. On the 31st December of that year they possessed 5,801 locomotive engines. By the 31st December, 1865, they had gradually increased to 7,414. The proportions have invariably been a little more than one engine for each two miles of railway open. On the London and North-Western, as already stated, the proportion is a little more than one engine a mile. The passenger carriages on the 31st December, 1860, were 15,076; but there must have been a great demolition of them in 1861, for on the 31st of December of that year they were only 14,609. However, they speedily recovered their numbers, for at the end of 1862 there were 15,366, and on the 31st December, 1865, 17,997, just a shade over a carriage and a third for each mile of railway open. “Other vehicles attached to passenger trains,”—these comprise break and luggage vans, travelling post offices and post office tenders, horse boxes, and carriage trucks. Their number at the end of 1861 was 5,737; on the 31st December, 1865, 6,853, a little less than one for every two miles. The use of carriage trucks has greatly diminished upon railways, but the use of horse boxes has not diminished, partly because in recent years all over England, wherever there is hunting, a “horse and his rider” can go to the field, each with his return ticket, thirty, forty, and even fifty miles, making an early start in the morning, and returning in the evening in time, at all events, for the rider’s dinner. The other “partly” is, that horse boxes have for some years been employed in a traffic for which they were not originally intended; for the Time books of many of the railways contain notices that they are available for the conveyance of the remains of persons to their last homes and resting places; and they are frequently used for this purpose.

Waggons, which comprise vehicles for the conveyance of every description of goods and minerals, timber waggons, cattle waggons, gunpowder waggons, bullion waggons, salt waggons, milk waggons, covered waggons, high-sided waggons, low-sided waggons, in short the genus waggon of every possible shape and conformity, were 188,623 on the 31st December, 1860, and on the 31st of December, 1865, they had increased to 226,407, or nearly 16¾ for each mile of railway.

The foregoing figures furnish matter for much consideration. They show, incontestably, how unceasingly the railway system of the United Kingdom, taken as a whole, continues its development. As new miles of railway are opened, and notwithstanding that they are situated principally in districts where both population and traffic are light, as compared with the population and traffic of the districts in which railways were first constructed, the total average of receipts throughout the United Kingdom, only receded three times. Thus, the average receipts per mile in 1852 were £2,141. In 1853, £2,346. In 1854, £2,510. In 1855, £2,597. In 1856, £2,659. In 1857, £2,660. There was a considerable fall in 1858 to £2,516. In 1859, they advanced to £2,574. In 1860, they were £2,661. In 1861, £2,628. In 1862, they fell to £2,523. They increased slightly in 1863, to £2,528. In 1864, they rose to £2,651; and, in 1865, they were the highest during the fifteen years, £2,691, or £550 a mile higher than in 1852.

Although the number of passengers has increased very greatly in the seven years, the principal increase has been, as will be seen presently, in those of the third class. As the average distance which each third-class passenger travels is much less than the average of one of the second class, and still less comparatively than one of the first class, it cannot be a matter of surprise, that the average money value of each railway passenger should have fallen from 1s. 6d. in 1859, to 1s. 2d. in 1865, and that of the total increase of receipts between 1859 and 1865 (£10,146,611), the receipts from passengers only has not increased more than £3,606,223, whilst the increase from goods, minerals, and cattle, has been £6,111,466. Minerals come in for the larger share of this augmentation. In the shape of quantity, the advance has been 26,049,004 tons, or 50 per cent. In cash earned the advance has also been about 50 per cent. The amount in 1859, was £4,223,002; in 1865, £6,496,402. No doubt conveyance of coals by railway is gaining rapidly upon conveyance by water. This is every day becoming more evident, especially as regards London. In fact, we have by us a return showing that during the first six months of the present year, the sea-borne coal to the Metropolis has decreased 32,480 tons, as compared with the same period of 1866; whilst coal carried by railway has increased 154,453 tons. In the last few years the quantity of coal carried by railway to London, has been gradually creeping up. Last year it was equal to that borne by water, at present it exceeds it; and henceforward, a large increase may be looked for, as the Midland Railway being now completed to London, that Company will be able to carry very fine qualities of coal from collieries which are at the shortest distance from the Metropolis of all the coal-fields of England. This will, no doubt, diminish to some considerable extent the metropolitan coal traffic of the London and North-Western Company. It now carries about two-fifths (about one million tons) of all the coal brought by railway into London.

And here, as so much has recently been said about the enormous strides that have been made in the coal extraction from our collieries in the United Kingdom, a few words on the subject may not be deemed inappropriate. It is true that, as will be seen from the subjoined summary, extracted from the Times of the 13th of September last, its production has increased with very great rapidity during the last twelve years. In 1855 it was 64,453,679 tons; in 1856, 66,645,450 tons; in 1857, 65,394,707 tons; in 1858, 65,008,649 tons; in 1859, 71,979,765 tons; in 1860, 80,042,698 tons; in 1861, 83,635,214 tons; in 1862, 81,638,338 tons; in 1863, 86,292,515 tons; in 1864, 92,787,873 tons; in 1865, 98,150,587 tons; and in 1866, 101,630,544 tons. But is there any real reason for the uneasiness that has been created about failure of supply in a century or so? We believe not, and our reasons are explained in the foot note.[13]

And now it will not be uninteresting to see what has become of all these coals. In the first place our export of them to all parts of the world was not very large, 8,733,327 tons in 1865, and 9,622,324 tons in 1866.[14] Secondly, they warmed (with the addition of some turf and a little wood), cooked, and made gas for the 30,157,239 persons who, according to the most recent returns, constitute the present population of the United Kingdom. Thirdly, we supplied with fuel, in 1865, some few foreign, and 2,718 British steam vessels, of which 1,745 were over fifty tons register, and 973 were fifty tons each and under; united, they represent a gross burden of 825,533 tons.[15] Fourthly, we furnished the principal consumption of coals for the engines of our iron-clads and our wooden-clads. Fifthly, our railway locomotives ran, as we have seen (in 1865), 139,527,127 miles, and taking the average consumption at about 35 lbs. a mile, which includes lighting up[16] and time that engines are standing in steam, waiting for duty, or acting as “pilots” (reserve and station engines), the total amount is 2,625,000 tons; and to this amount may be added the consumption in the locomotive and carriage shops, stores, and stations, 1,375,000, making the direct railway consumption 4,000,000 tons. Sixthly, independent of the coal used in the reduction of our other minerals to the state of metal, we produced, by means of 613 blast furnaces, in 1866, from 9,665,012 tons of iron ore, raised during the year, 2,576,928 tons of pig iron in England, 952,123 in Wales, and 994,000 tons in Scotland; total, 4,223,051 tons, which consumed at least 6,000,000 tons of coal; and, by means of some 6,000,000 more tons, we kept at work, in 1866, 256 iron works, in which there were 6,239 puddling furnaces, and 826 rolling mills.[17] Seventhly, our agricultural steam cultivation is beginning to count for something. And lastly, our coal assisted in the manufacture of most of the articles of our dress, and of most of the articles we require in our domestic economy. It is by means of the coal that we raise that we are able to manufacture the greater portion of the articles we export to every part of the civilised or uncivilised world. Thanks mainly to disembowelled coal, and to its noble adjunct, iron,[18] combined with the unceasing and undying energy of Englishmen, the money value of our exports has risen from £115,821,092 in 1854, to £188,827,785 in 1866. The returns for the first half of 1867 show a slight falling off as compared with those for the first half of 1856. Nevertheless, they were £88,000,000. Our colonies take between a third and one quarter, and of that proportion India alone takes a quantity approaching to one-half. To be sure, India has a gross area of 1,553,282 square miles, with a population of 193,100,963, of whom 144,674,615 belong to British India, 47,909,199 to native and independent states, 203,887 to France, and 313,262 to Portugal. Australia took from us £13,662,650 in 1866, being an increase of £323,409 over 1865, when her population was 1,599,580, an increase from 1861 of 333,148. In short,—let us say it again,—thanks to coal, energy, and iron, we deal with forty-eight independent states, and twenty-two of our colonies.[19] These seventy countries constitute, with our own little islands, practically every portion of the inhabited globe.[20]

The percentage of the working expenses of railways to the receipts was, for 1865, according to the returns of the Board of Trade, 48 per cent.; in 1862 it was the highest of the seven years, 49 per cent. But we fear that these returns are not very strictly accurate; recent inquiries and investigations have tended to show that some of the items charged to capital in the half-yearly accounts should have been debited to revenue. No doubt there has been exaggeration in several of the statements, which professional accountants have submitted to the committee of investigation by whom they have been employed. But whether this be so or not, the time has come when all charges must either be made against revenue or remain unpaid. Capital can no longer lend its friendly aid and assistance; therefore, in a year or so it will be seen how far the percentages hitherto published have been based on fact or on the fictions that have been alleged against them. The subject of working expenses is an important one, as affecting materially the question of dividend to shareholders. We therefore will give more detailed information respecting them when we connect them, in subsequent pages, with receipts and profits. In the meantime, we give, on the over-leaf, a return that has just been prepared from the three last half-yearly reports and statements of accounts published by the twelve following companies. We are aware that as regards one company, the London, Brighton and South Coast, the working expenses have been stated by the present board of directors at 10 per cent. higher than those we now publish, but we believe that these latter approach the nearer to correctness of the two.

Statement of Working Expenses on Receipts, for the eighteen months ending 30th June, 1867.

Name of Company. Rate per cent.

London and North-Western

46·63

North-Eastern

48·05

Great Western

48·65

Midland

47·26

Lancashire and Yorkshire

44·87

Great Northern

52·68

Great Eastern

53·96

Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln

45·24

London and South-Western

53·63

South-Eastern

52·68

London and Brighton

58·86

Bristol and Exeter

49·76

We need not, at the present day, discuss the abstract question of the value of railways to the community, but it will be well to record some of the advantages which the population of Great Britain has obtained by their establishment. Let us begin with passenger traffic. Previous to 1837, the year of the opening of the line between Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, the speed of stage coaches did not average eight miles an hour. The speed of mail coaches was a little under ten. It is true that in former times we were proud, as we ought still to be, of the roads which the skill and ingenuity of our engineers had, by means of what were then considered vast excavations, extensive embankments, bridges, viaducts, and other works, carried through the country. In one grand respect British roads differ from those magnificent constructions of a similar nature which Imperial Rome had accomplished when in the zenith of her splendour. Those were made without the slightest view to commercial objects. The power which it gave her to transport her legions from one extremity of her dominions to another was the sole consideration with her in inducing the formation of those great causeways, the remains of which have excited the admiration of succeeding generations, even to the present day.

In 1837, there were fifty-two mail coaches, and about 500 stage coaches. If we allow to each of them the full complement of passengers that it was authorised to carry, we shall probably arrive at a tolerably correct estimate of the number of persons who then used to travel daily in the United Kingdom. It is true that the average loads of mail and stage coaches was not considered to exceed two-thirds of their number when complete, but they should be considered as carrying full loads, to allow for passengers travelling only short stages. Thus viewed, the number of persons travelling by these conveyances throughout the Kingdom was (mail coaches seven, stage coaches fourteen, exclusive of guard and coachman) 7,364, or at the rate per annum (of 365 days) 2,687,860. If to these be added 25 per cent., as representing aristocracy with post horses, and plebiscity in waggons, and a few in canal boats, we arrive at a gross total of 3,359,825. To this number may be joined, say over a million who were passengers in river and coasting steamboats.[21] Every other traveller went by the means of locomotion beneficently granted to us by the all-wise and ever-provident Creator of all things human and divine.

In 1837 the population of the United Kingdom was 25,650,426 persons, so that, assuming our calculation to be correct, the number of travellers journeying only by road was little more than an eighth of its population. As already stated, seven years previous to 1837, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (31 miles long) had been opened for traffic. But during all that period it was simply a local line unconnected with any places except its two termini, and its then comparatively unimportant intermediate stations. Nevertheless, by the substitution of steam for horse power, the number of passengers (about 21,600 per annum), previous to the opening of the railway, at once quadrupled, notwithstanding that the speed had only increased in the ratio from nine to seventeen miles an hour, the number of trains being six a day in each direction.

By 1837, when the average speed had increased to 25 miles an hour, this quadrupling had increased seven-fold: at the present time the maximum running speed on this portion of the London and North-Western Railway is forty miles an hour—the average speed of trains is about twenty-seven miles, and on week-days there are sixteen trains in each direction, on Sundays six. Yet there are now three competing lines to that of the London and North-Western between Liverpool and Manchester.

Adding the 604,000 passengers of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the proportion of land travellers to the whole population of the kingdom, in 1837, was not quite a sixth. The passengers who travelled on only thirty-one miles of railway were nearly one-sixth of all that travelled by all the mail coaches, stage coaches, post cars, post chaises, private carriages with post horses, waggons, and canal boats, over all the high roads, post roads, and the canals of the United Kingdom.

Observe the onward progress of land passenger development. No railways of the slightest importance were finished between 1830 and 1837, but by the year 1843—two years and a-half after the Great Western line had been completed between London and Bristol—1,902 miles of railway had been opened for traffic, and in the year terminating at that date, 23,466,896 passengers were carried by railway. These were, of course, exclusive of those conveyed by mail and stage coaches, and other conveyances. Their numbers could not have diminished, on the contrary, they must have increased, seeing that these conveyances then began to be used in subordination, as it were, to railways, and not as the arterial and leading means of passenger communication. Travellers went shorter distances by them—nevertheless what used to be called the “post horse duty,” that is the tax levied upon public conveyances and horses employed in passenger traffic, never diminished—on the contrary, it increased slightly during several years. For some time past it has been modified in many of its features, so that a comparison between its amount, and what it was in 1837, cannot be instituted. But the fact is notorious, that even now, with upwards of 14,000 miles of railway open throughout the kingdom, many more horses are employed in connection with passenger traffic than there were in 1837.

The number of persons who travelled by railway in the year ending 30th June, 1843, was 23,466,896: the number estimated by road, 3,359,825, total 26,826,721.

As the estimated population of the United Kingdom in June, 1843, was 27,033,692, it follows that it and the number of persons who had travelled in the previous twelve months, both by rail and by road, were not far from equal. In fact the number of persons who travelled by railway may be considered to represent the excess of travelling in 1843 over that in 1837. Let it here be noted, that in 1843, the third class passengers formed not more than a fourth of the total number carried, they being 6,891,844. We shall see presently how marvellously these numbers have progressed, not only absolutely, but in comparison with the travellers of the two other classes.

Twelve months more, on the 30th of June, 1844, with 2,050 miles open, the railway passengers exceeded the total population of the kingdom by 407,799; the numbers being respectively 27,763,602, and 27,355,803, and third class passengers had risen to be almost exactly one-third of the whole. We exclude travellers by road, not because they were less numerous than previously, but because their numbers become every year less important in comparison with the total passenger movement of the empire. For any purposes of computation that may result from these statements, they may fairly be taken for what they were in 1837, 3,359,825.

It was in 1848 that the greatest number of miles in any one year were opened for traffic,—1,191; the nearest approach to it was in the previous year,—780. In 1863, the number was 771. The smallest number was in 1843,—91 miles. The following year, 196; and in 1855, 236. The average from 1837 to 1866, both included, has been 690.

In the twelve months ending the 30th June, 1848, with an estimated population of 28,015,685, the number of persons travelling by railway had increased to double that of the population, 57,965,071, of whom 29,083,782 were third class,—1,068,097 more than the population, and a few more than one-half of the whole number carried.

“The cause of this augmentation of third class passengers is,” says the late Dr. Lardner, in his treatise upon Railway Economy, edition of 1850, “easily explained. Previous to 1846, the carriages provided for third class passengers were frequently without roofs or windows. The third class trains were started at inconvenient hours, and were transported at a comparatively slow rate. In fact, the companies appeared to study the means which were most likely to discourage the use of these cheap trains, prompted, apparently, by the apprehension that the more affluent classes[22] resorting to them, the revenue and profits from the other trains would be diminished.” By these means the humbler classes were, no doubt, deprived in a great measure of the benefit of railway transport. An Act, however, was passed in 1845 for the establishment of at least one third class train a day in each direction, in accordance with a time bill to be previously approved by the Board of Trade, the speed to be not less than twelve miles an hour, and the fare for conveyance—in carriages, the dimensions, seating accommodation, and size of windows of which must be sanctioned by the Board of Trade—not to exceed a penny a mile. Without such approval and sanction, a train is not considered, what is known in railway language, as a “parliamentary train” within the meaning of the Act. The company offending, therefore, is not allowed a remission of the duty on the passengers conveyed by such train, to which it would be otherwise entitled under the certificate of the Board of Trade, and it is liable to penalties for non-fulfilment of the terms of the Act. In two or three cases these penalties have been enforced and recovered by decisions obtained in the courts of law.

The very great development of third class traffic, by means of cheap parliamentary trains, has produced a marked change in the feelings of railway managers upon this subject in the last few years. Now, almost all the time tables show, specifically, the trains by which they can be conveyed, and by reference, among others, to the most recent monthly guide book of the London and North-Western Company, it will be seen that third class passengers are now conveyed from London to Liverpool by one particular train in six hours and a-half; to Manchester in five hours and twenty minutes. At the institution of parliamentary trains the time by them from London to both those cities was fifteen hours. But this was just half the time that the coaches took in the olden time between London and Liverpool, and it was also at just half the cost as regards fare, irrespective of the fees to guard and coachman.

In the three last years, both the Metropolitan and the London, Chatham and Dover Companies have carried the principle of cheap fares for the labouring classes much beyond the penny-a-mile system. These companies issue what are called “workman’s tickets.” It will be seen by the subjoined notice[23] contained in the monthly time books of the London, Chatham and Dover Company, that there are two classes of workman’s tickets. The distance from Victoria Station to Penge is 7¼ miles.

With such facilities it cannot he a matter of surprise, that whilst in the seven years, between 1859 and 1865, both inclusive, the first class passengers increased 10,459,054, an average yearly increase of 1,494,122; the second 26,431,338, an average yearly increase of 3,775,905; those of the third class rose 65,215,029, an average yearly increase of 9,316,432. But this is not altogether the way to look at it, for whilst the increase of third class passengers, in the four years 1859-60-61-62, was 19,253,241—a yearly average of 4,893,310, the increase of 1863 over 1862 was 15,617,917; 1864 over 1863, 15,229,183; and 1865 over 1864, 15,114,688.

In 1865 the total number of passengers carried (exclusive of 97,147 residential ticket holders) was 251,862,715, thus composed—first class, 29,663,205; second class, 70,783,241; third class, 151,416,269. But to the total number have to he added the journeys taken by the periodical ticket holders. If 100 journeys be allowed for each such holder (a number much below reality), it adds 9,717,400 to the gross amount, of which two-thirds should be attributed to first class, and one-third to second. Per contra, a deduction of about 5,000,000 must be made for passengers “booked through”—that is, passengers conveyed in a single journey over the lines of two or more companies. For instance, a passenger booked from London to Limerick, is carried, independent of his water conveyance, over the lines of four railway companies, and in the returns to the Board of Trade he is included as a passenger upon each of those lines as if he had taken a ticket upon it, yet, in reality, he takes but one journey, although it is a long one, 464 miles. Deducting say 5,000,000 on this account, it makes the total number of paying railway passengers about 256,500,000. In twenty-eight years, population and land-conveyed passengers have completely reversed their positions. In 1837 population was eight times as many as passengers, and in 1865 passengers were more than eight times as many as population.

As to the speed at which railway passengers are conveyed, we shall speak when referring to what our railways have done for postal service.

“Forty shillings a ton for goods between Liverpool and Manchester.” Yes; that was the price paid just a hundred years ago, and nobody could reckon upon having them in less than a week from the time of consignment. But the opening of the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal diminished the price to six shillings a ton, and the time to three days. Now-a-days, the cotton spinner of Manchester would “spin a yarn” of formidable dimensions to a goods manager of a railway that dared to keep his goods more than a couple of hours on the road, with four or five hours more added for loading, unloading, and delivery. Not forty years ago, the charge was 1s. 1d. a ton a mile for goods, no matter of what kind or quality, conveyed by waggon. Thus, if any were weak enough to send a ton of goods from London to Manchester, the tariff rate would be £5. 1s. 4d., although probably the carrier, as an act of amiable condescension towards his customer, and in hopes of future favours, might take off the odd shilling and the level fourpence, and be content to carry for an even “fiver.” He would proceed at the top-gallant speed of fifteen knots a day, and he would reach his port, if all were well, in eighteen to twenty days from the time of his heaving anchor.

In process of time, the canal owners and lessees managed to more than double the charge for the conveyance of cotton between Liverpool and Manchester, and also to more than double the time for its delivery. They did more; if any of their customers happened to displease or offend them, their goods were put under ban. Canal managers were the trade unionists of those days. Nevertheless, the quantity of cotton carried was six times as much in 1824 as it had been in 1795.

The goods traffic of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway commenced on the 4th December, 1830, with a train of eighteen waggons, the weight of each of which was a little over 1¼ tons. The eighteen waggons carried a paying weight of 51½ tons of goods, the tender, water, and fuel weighed 4 tons, and, with the fifteen persons in the train, there was a total weight of 80 tons, which was drawn by an engine weighing 7½ tons, in two hours and fifty-four minutes, just 10½ miles an hour.

The development of goods traffic of our first-born English railway, although it was rapid and important, was not so striking as that of passengers; nevertheless, it increased from 1,432 tons in the first month to 5,104 tons in the fourth month. The coal traffic, from which much was expected, was practically nil; it did not become an important item of receipts until years afterwards. In fact, the Goods and Mineral Traffic of railways scarcely developed itself in the early period of their history, and, until about the year 1840, the relative proportions of passengers to goods was as 85 to 15. A striking illustration of this fact is afforded by the London and Birmingham Company; in its estimates of traffic submitted to Parliament in 1833, it was calculated that the goods traffic would produce £340,000 in the first year after opening. It barely realised £90,000, and it was twelve years before it had attained the sum of £340,000. But since 1840 the change has been gradually working. In 1847, with an average length of 3,426 miles open for traffic, 16,460,599 tons of goods of all kinds (in which are included minerals) were carried, and 3,709,030 head of cattle. All this traffic may he considered a new traffic, created solely through the influence of railways, precisely as the passenger traffic of railways, enormous as it is, is the excess of traffic over that conveyed by roadway. Between 1830 and 1837 it was often predicted that the canals of the kingdom would be ruined by the competition of railways, yet in 1846, seven to eight years after the main lines of railway which would come into competition with canals were opened, the latter were paying the following percentages on their capital:—Grand Junction 6, Oxford 26, Coventry 25, Old Birmingham 16, Trent and Mersey 30! Have canals suffered since then? Certainly not; they carry millions more tons of goods per annum than they did thirty years ago, and if they have to carry at a cheaper rate than formerly, competition has sharpened speed in transit, as well as despatch in collection and delivery; and not only is more business than ever done on the canals, but there is much more money made for distribution among shareholders.

In order to show the present state and estimation of canal property in England, we have extracted from the Investor’s Manual for August last, a publication issued monthly in connection with the Economist newspaper, a statement of the dividends that canals now pay to their shareholders. Commencing with the least profitable, and gradually ascending, we find that the Gloucester and Berkeley pays 2 per cent. in addition to paying 5 per cent. on its preferential stock; the Sheffield 2½; the Warwick and Birmingham 3; the Lancaster is leased to the London and North-Western Railway, at 3⅝; the Barnsley Canal pays 4; the Macclesfield Canal is leased by the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway Company, at 4¼; the North Staffordshire Railway Company leases 116 miles of canal, which under the terms of the lease have recently paid 4¼ per cent., it has been as high as 4½. By comparing the canal receipts of the first half of 1865 with those for the corresponding period of 1866, it will be seen that the former were £45,414, the latter £52,488. The Grand Junction pays 4½, in addition to a 6 per cent. preferential capital, on exactly the same amount as the ordinary capital; the Rochdale pays 4¾; the Stratford and Avon is guaranteed 5 per cent. by the Great Western Railway Company; the Peak Forest pays 5; the Regents Canal, with its very large capital, pays 5¼; the Kennet and Avon, 6; the Forth and Clyde, 6½; the Oxford, 8¼; the London and North-Western guarantees the Birmingham Canal 10; the Coventry pays 13; the Stourbridge paid 14½ in 1864, but since then its profits have diminished, nevertheless it pays 11½; the Staffordshire and Worcestershire’s dividend was 21½ per cent. in 1864, but it has now fallen to 15½,—strange to say, the only canal in the whole list of canals that does not pay any dividend is close at hand, the Worcester and Birmingham; its capital is £450,000, the sum per share paid up is £78. 8s., yet the shares must have intrinsic value, as their price is quoted 12 in share lists. The last and the highest is the Liverpool and Leeds, notwithstanding that for about a third of its length it runs parallel to three railways, and for about two-thirds to two; its goods traffic is leased to the London and North-Western, the Lancashire, and the Midland, until 1871 at the rate of 28 per cent. per annum. Of course the profits of the Bridgewater and Elsemere Canals, being private property, cannot be stated, but they are known to be very large.

If we step from 1847 to 1859, we find that goods of all descriptions have in railway accounts become separated from minerals. Of the former, the 10,002 miles of railway that were open for traffic at the end of 1859, had carried 27,005,737 tons, and they had yielded a receipt to the companies of £8,373,283, so that each ton of goods carried was worth 6s. 2¼d. to them. We shall not stop to tell the particulars of intermediate years up to 1865; suffice it to say, that every year not only has the gross tonnage increased, but also the amount realised upon each ton of goods carried. This item which, as we have just stated, was 6s. 2¼d. in 1859, had risen steadily up to 6s. 7¼d. in 1865, and at the same time the number of tons carried had increased 9,781,901 tons, the number in 1865 being 36,787,638. In like manner the money received for goods increased £3,784,956, the amount in 1865 being £12,158,239; but, just as with third class passengers, the main increase has been in the years 1863, 1864 and 1865. It was at the rate of about 2,000,000 tons a year, and nearly one million sterling.

We have already referred so fully to coals and other subterranean products, at pages 48 et seq., that we only add here, that the average value to the companies of a ton of minerals was 1s. 7½d. in 1859, and that, with occasional fluctuations, it had increased to 1s. 8d. in 1865. This is a low average, and it looks as if the profits to the railway companies from mineral traffic must be very slight indeed.

The carriage of cattle of all kinds increased from 3,709,030 head in 1847, to 12,805,613 in 1859, when each head was worth 11¼d. There was hardly any change or fluctuation until 1863, when the number increased to 13,029,675 head. In 1865 they were 14,530,937 head, but their value had risen to 11½d. a head.

The conveyance of cattle by railway reminds us how enormously all the great centres and bee-hives of our population are indebted to the iron road and the iron horse for their daily consumption and sustenance. “Give us this day our daily bread,” is in the prayer that all Christians should offer up, morning and evening, and the railways do give it in a way the stoppage of which for two or three days would cause a famine in the land. Dr. Wynter, in the article “London Commissariat” of his Curiosities of Civilization, gives the marvellous statistics relating the daily supplies of food which come to London. But since Dr. Wynter wrote, the population of the Metropolis and of its outskirts has increased a fifth. Yet the great London mouth is fed, and the great London stomach is replenished with the same regularity as ever. As it is with London, so it is with every other concentration of souls in the land. Demand is always increasing, yet supply keeps pace, and never fails to be hand and hand with it. For we have the consolation of knowing that what we are unable to produce at home we have not the slightest difficulty in finding abroad. In addition to the 14,000,000 of cattle of all kinds that are conveyed, last year, from our green pastures to our slaughter-houses, we imported 237,739 oxen, cows, and calves; and as each of these animals, as he or she steps on shore, is, according to Board of Trade computation, worth £18. 14s. 5d., it follows that John Bull has paid for them, in meal or malt, in money or money’s worth, £4,092,941. 790,880 was the number of foreign sheep and lambs that came among us last year; and, as the Board of Trade put a value upon each of them of £2. 10s. in 1865, which value has not been diminished in 1866, the score against us on this account would be, according to arithmetic as practised in the Statistical Department of that branch of public service, £1,504,312; but according to the arithmetic as known elsewhere, it is £1,977,200. The former sum could only be correct if the value were £1. 18s.½d. per head.[24]

But we must not continue the subject in anything approaching detail; suffice it is to say, that among other articles from abroad, we had meat in the shape of bacon, beef, and pork, to the extent of about 1,000,000 cwt. in quantity, and £3,000,000 in value. Of butter and cheese we had 2,000,000 cwt., of the value of £9,000,000. The use of coffee among us is diminishing. In 1852 it was 42,000,000 lbs., in 1866, it was 10,000,000 lbs. less; but the home consumption of Tea has risen in the same period from 54,713,000 lbs. to 102,265,000 lbs.,[25] nearly double; but on the other hand the duty we paid for the lesser quantity was more than double what we paid for the larger, £5,900,625 in 1852, but happily only £2,658,716 in 1866. Of foreign corn we received, for home consumption, 23,000,000 cwt. of wheat, 8,000,000 cwt. of barley, 9,000,000 cwt. of oats, 14,000,000 cwt. of maize, and 5,000,000 cwt. of wheat flour, the aggregate value of corn amounting to £30,000,000. Of the important article of sugar, we received 10,500,000 cwt. The strong beverages came to us to the value of 2¼ millions for spirits, and not far short of five millions for wine. We are fond of spices and seasonings also, 130,000 cwt. of pepper, and 24,000 cwt. of cinnamon, cloves and nutmegs, and 1,100,000 cwt. of raisins and currants. But the article of all others in the list, the importation of which, in 1866, seems the most marvellous is that of eggs, 438,878,880! 14½ per annum for each inhabitant of the kingdom, ranging from “the infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” to “the last scene of all that ends this strange eventful history, second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” and all these, independent and exclusive of all the eggs that all the true born English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh hens lay all over the kingdom. Truly we must be the most egg-eating nation in the world. Housekeepers of Great Britain! we wish you to know that the President of the Board of Trade assesses the value of each egg, when brought into the country, at a little less than 2⅖ farthings, or about 7¼d. a dozen. The difference between this price and the minimum of “16 a shilling warranted” constitute the charges and profits upon them between the time of their landing and their arrival in your kitchens. Fifteen years ago (1852) our importation of eggs was not a fourth of its present amount—it was 108,281,233.

CHAPTER IV.

RAILWAYS AND THE POST OFFICE—SPEED ON RAILWAYS.

Passengers, luggage, horses, carriages, dogs, merchandise, minerals and live stock constitute the whole of the traffic, as well as the whole of the receipts of railway companies, with one only exception. That exception is an important one: it is the conveyance of mails by railway.

From the day that railways were opened in England, the Post Office has resorted to them for the conveyance of its mails. The Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened for traffic, as already stated, on the 14th of September, 1830; on the same day the Post Office commenced using it, and mails were conveyed on it four times a day in each direction. The same happened at the opening of the Grand Junction between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham on the 6th July, 1837; upon the completion of the line between London and Birmingham, on the 20th September, 1838, and so in succession with every leading railway throughout the kingdom.

The Post Office soon became jealous of the power and position of railway companies, and the expression of its jealousy culminated in the introduction, at its instance, of a bill into Parliament, in 1838, “for the conveyance of mails by railway.” The bill proposed to give power to the Post Office to run its own trains upon any line of railway open for traffic, without payment of toll. It was further to be authorised to remove all obstacles in the shape of passenger or other carriages out of the way of its trains; pains and penalties were to be amerced on the servants of companies if the “lawful commands” of the postal officials were disobeyed. The aid of the railway plant and of railway officials was commanded, and the remuneration to the companies for these services was to be this much, and no more—the cost of the wear, tear and deterioration that Post Office trains inflicted upon the rails!

Mr. Labouchere, now Lord Taunton, introduced the bill, and in doing so said that the country was at the mercy of railway companies which had bound the land in bonds of iron—bonds from which it was necessary that the land should be freed by the action of Parliament. Mr. Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, prince of jobbers, and for many years enjoying the sinecure and emoluments of Comptroller of the Exchequer, an office abolished at his death, warned all railway directors to beware of opposing the bill, threatening them, on the part of the Government, of which he was then a member, with more stringent measures, if they were so ill-advised.

The bill, nevertheless, met with vigorous opposition; at its head was Mr. George Carr Glyn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Company, and then, as now, the honoured member for the Borough of Kendal, whom Mr. John Francis truthfully describes in the dedication of his History of the English Railway[26], as “one of the earliest, as well as one of the most efficient allies of the system;”

The effect of the opposition was that an act was passed which differed essentially in character and conditions from the bill that had been presented to Parliament. The chief power given to the Post Office was that the railway companies were bound to convey mails at such hours as the Postmaster-General should direct; if required, they were to apply separate carriages exclusively to their conveyance, and remuneration was to be according to agreement between the Postmaster-General and the Directors, but in case of difference recourse was to be had to arbitration.

The era of postal reform commenced on the 10th of January, 1840. In the year previous to it, the number of letters circulating through the post was 82,471,000. In these were included 6,563,000 franks. The estimated number of newspapers conveyed by the post in 1839 was 44,500,000. In 1840 there were about 1,300 miles of railway open. What had before been an advantage to the Post Office, and to the letter-writing public, by the gain of speed which railways afforded, at once became a necessity to the department, in consequence of the sudden increase in the weight and the bulk of the mails. The number of letters delivered in the United Kingdom, in 1840, was more than double that of 1839. They were 168,768,000, and there was every indication that they would increase, if not in the gigantic ratio of the first year, at all events very rapidly; such was the case, for the number carried in 1841 showed an increase of nearly 28,000,000. Newspapers increased about 500,000 in 1840. It would have been supposed that the Post Office would have entered into negotiations, in a friendly spirit, with the officials of the railway companies; this, however, was not the case: on the contrary, from the earliest period of postal reform until recent years, the railway has experienced nothing but hostility and reproach from the department. Personal and friendly communication with its heads became out of the question, for the demeanour of one high official (whose name, without being mentioned, can easily be surmised) to many of the leading railway officials was such, that several declined to meet him; recourse was then had to arbitration, in accordance with the powers conferred on the Post Office by the provisions of the Act of Parliament. The result of references, many of which were very protracted, and in the course of which very minute and elaborate evidence was adduced on both sides, was that decisions were given much more favourable to the railways than the Post Office had expected. The proof that the demands of railway companies did not justify the appellations which the Post Office attributed to them was, that they were not much above the amounts awarded. But as regards the Post Office, the payments proposed by it, and those awarded differed very widely. This, however, did not make any difference in the crusading energy of the department. Long before the issue of Postmaster-General’s reports,[27] whenever an opportunity offered, either in giving evidence before a Committee of Parliament, or in furnishing information, there was sure to be an insinuation, an innuendo, or a more open attack upon the railway authorities who had succeeded in not allowing the Post Office to have it all its own way.

The Postmaster-General’s First Report partakes more of the character of an historic document than of a record of the transactions of an official year. There are, therefore, only some few unimportant remarks in it upon the subject of railways. It was otherwise in the second, as will appear by the following somewhat lengthy extract:—

“Undoubtedly great advantage has arisen from the employment of railways in respect of rapid conveyance. Between districts which, even in the best days of the mail coach system, were, postally speaking, two days apart, the letters now pass in a single night.

“The facilities thus afforded to commerce, and to the business of life in general, can hardly be exaggerated, nor is there any doubt that they have tended largely to increase the amount of postal correspondence, while in return cheap postage has equally tended to increase railway traffic.

“Again, the service has been most materially promoted by the introduction of travelling Post Offices,[28] i. e., carriages in which the mail bags are opened and made up, the letters being assorted while the train is in progress; an arrangement which not only obviates the necessity of the stoppages which would otherwise be required at certain ‘forward’ offices, but has greatly tended to reduce the number of mail bags and accounts, and to simplify the whole system.

“Against these great advantages, however, there is an important set-off in increased expense; for, strange as it may seem, that change, which to the public at large has so much reduced the charge for the conveyance, whether of persons or of goods, has had precisely the reverse effect as respects the conveyance of mails.

“No doubt this result is attributable partly to the necessity for running certain mail trains at hours unsuitable for passenger traffic; but even when the Post Office uses the ordinary trains established by the companies for their own purposes, the rate of charge, especially considering the regularity and extent of custom, is almost always higher than that made to the public for like services.

“It is important that these facts should be correctly understood, especially by those who may have to arbitrate between the Post Office and the Railway Companies, because from time to time great efforts have been made to represent the service as underpaid.

“The total payments to the companies for the year 1854 were £392,600, which it may be observed, exceeds by £83,000 the five per cent. passenger tax for the same period. The above points are fully discussed in an able report by Mr. Edward Page (Inspector General of Mails), which will be found at page 45 of the appendix.

“To this report I would also refer for an investigation of the claims frequently made by the railway companies for compensation on the ground of

alleged injury by the book post. The report clearly shows: first, that the service which is alleged to be an injury, is, in reality, a benefit; second, that even if it were otherwise, the law relieving newspapers from the compulsory stamp, must have had the effect of transferring from the mail bags to the companies’ vans a weight of newspapers many times exceeding that which the book post is erroneously alleged to have withdrawn from the companies’ vans to the mail bags.”

The foregoing is in the body of the report, what follows appears as a foot-note.

“As nearly as it can be estimated it appears that, while the whole number of book packets conveyed annually by the Post Office is probably over stated at three millions, the number of newspapers[29] passing through the post has decreased by about twenty-five millions, or by more than eight times the number of all the book packets. Besides this reduction in number, there has been a decrease in the average weight of the newspapers sent through the post; and the combined effect of these changes has been to reduce the total weight of the newspapers by an amount more than nine times as great as the total weight of all the book packets.”

There never has been anything to show, either at the time those paragraphs were written, or subsequently, that cheap postage has tended to increase railway traffic. We are therefore at a loss to understand why such an assertion should be adduced as an argument. The same remark applies to the connection attempted to be set up between the amount paid by the Post Office for the transmission of mails through the country, and the tax which railway companies pay to the Government as their contribution to the fiscal burdens, unavoidably and of necessity imposed upon industry by the State: and it must also be considered strange that the Post Office should make a Postmaster-General’s Report the medium of conveying to arbitrators its opinion as to the mode in which they should arbitrate between it and the companies.

However, we pass over these minor and insignificant points, to come to the very serious misrepresentation which is embodied in the foot-note. If the reader will be so good as to read it again, he will see words, which, if they mean anything, mean that the number of newspapers circulating through the post was 25,000,000 less in 1855, than it was in 1854, the object being to show that although 3,000,000 of book packets were carried through the post in 1855, railways were not sufferers thereby, as these packets only formed one-eighth of the number of newspapers that had been withdrawn from postal circulation, owing to the abolition of the compulsory stamp duty. Now we know that in consequence of the reduction in 1836 of the Stamp Duty upon newspapers,[30] from nominal 4d. and real 3¼d. each, to 1d., the number posted had steadily increased each year. Therefore, if the assertion of the foot-note were correct, newspapers posted would have suddenly fallen, in 1855, to 46,000,000, that is to only 1,500,000 more than they were in 1839; yet at page 19 of the identical Second Report, it is stated that 71,000,000 of newspapers were posted in 1855. Thus at page 15, to serve one purpose, figures are given which would show that only 46,000,000 were posted, but four pages farther, to serve another purpose, that of showing how postal business has increased, they are stated at 71,000,000.

Let us now turn to the Third Report. At page 10, the number of newspapers transmitted through the post in 1856, is stated to be 71,000,000. If this statement be correct, it would show, either that the number transmitted in 1855 had in reality been about 71,000,000, or that, on the mechanical principle of action and reaction being equal and contrary, there had been a fall of 25,000,000 in 1855, and that precisely the same rise had taken place in 1856. This rise in one year would have to be considered all the more remarkable, inasmuch as the total number, not only of newspapers, but of book post packets transmitted in 1865, was 97,250,000 according to one statement, 2,766 more according to another. Owing to the unceasing changes in the mode of imparting information to the public by means of the Postmaster-General’s reports, the number of newspapers, exclusive of book post packets, cannot be given, but, including these latter, there was, according to the Postmaster-General’s Twelfth Report, an increase of only 26,250,000 in ten years, as against an alleged fall of 25,000,000 in one year, and a recovery to the same amount in the next.

We come now to deal with the Report, dated the 29th February, 1856, by Mr. Edward Page, an excellent officer within the limits of his duties as Inspector-General of Mails, as well as a courteous and agreeable gentleman. He is consequently much esteemed and respected.

But before going farther, let us premise that the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, in the course of the inaugural address which, as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, he delivered on the 8th of January, 1856, made the following observations upon the connection between the Post Office and the railways:—

“The facilities afforded by railways to the Post Office are, no doubt, of the highest public consequence. The speed which is attained in the transmission would appear, at first, to be the greatest item in the catalogue of those facilities; but it may be doubted if it is the most important. What is really of the greatest value to the Post Office, is the facility afforded for conveying bulk. It is not too much to say that without railway facilities, the excellent plans of Mr. Rowland Hill, for the reduction of the rates of postage, could not have been carried out to their full extent. The first essential to the success of those plans would have been wanting; for there would have been no sufficient means of conveying the greatly-increased mass of correspondence necessary to be carried in order to render the reduced rates of postage profitable. The old mail coaches were never planned for bulk, which would, indeed, have been fatal to that regularity and speed, upon which the Post Office could alone rely as the means of securing to the Government the monopoly of the letter carriage of the nation. The aggregate weight of the evening mails despatched from London in 1838, in twenty-eight mail coaches, amounted, as was shown by the Report of the Select Committee on Postage, to only 4 tons 6 cwt. or an average of about 3¼ cwt. per coach. But now on a Friday night, when so many thousands of weekly papers are sent into the country, the Post Office requires, on the London and North-Western Railway, not only the use of the travelling post-office which is provided for its convenience, but it occupies also six or eight additional vans. It is obvious, therefore, that if the existing system of the Post Office had been in operation, with the present results, in the days of mail-coach communication, not one mail alone, but fourteen or fifteen mails, such as were used in those days, would have been needed to carry on, with regularity, the Post Office traffic between (say) London and Birmingham. Nearly every coach that ran in 1830, between Birmingham and London, would now have been needed for Post Office purposes, if the London and North-Western Railway had not been brought into existence. The expenses would, consequently have been so large, that a universal penny postage would have entailed a certain loss. For the great blessing, therefore, derived from cheap postal communication, the nation is, in a great degree, indebted to the facilities offered by railways. It must be borne in mind here, that the boon conferred upon the public is not limited to written correspondence. Viewed in reference to the postal facilities they afford, the railways are the great public instructors and educators of the day. Contrast the size of the Times, in 1830, and in 1856. Do you suppose that the huge mass of paper, which you are permitted to forward by to-night’s post, would have been conveyed upon the same terms, if the means of conveyance had remained limited to the mails and its four horses? Look at the immense mass of parliamentary reports and documents, now distributed, every session, amongst all the constituencies of the Empire, at almost a nominal charge. To what do the public owe the valuable information embodied in those documents, but to railways? except as parcels, by waggons or by canal boats, they never could have been conveyed prior to the existence of the railway system; and if they never could have been distributed, we may rely upon it they never would have been printed. The reasoning which applies to the Times and to State Papers, applies to newspapers generally, and to the distribution of the prices current of merchants, and of magazines, monthly publications, and bulky parcels of every description. Without railway facilities they would probably never have been circulated at all. Certainly they never could have been circulated to the extent necessary to make them profitable. Hence, the railway, as before observed, is the greatest engine for the diffusion of knowledge.”

These words called forth Mr. Page’s Report, and, as the public usually feels interested in matters relating to the Post Office, we have given it in full as an Appendix. We also have done very nearly the same with the Reply to Mr. Page, which Mr. Stephenson read to the Institution on the 20th of May, 1856. Combinedly these documents are long; nevertheless, we think they will repay perusal; at all events, our readers, if they choose to read, will get both views of the question, about which we also wish to say something.

Mr. Page, as it will be seen, passes by “bulk,” and deals, in all his arguments, with weight only. Yet the difference between them, even in the case of mails, the most favourable for the Post Office is very great indeed. Let us, for illustration, take the case of our Eastern mails; being all conveyed in parallel-sided boxes,[31] filled to the uttermost their inner dimensions will permit, they pack closely, and there is no loss of space, as must be in the case of bags, which, even when full, do not lay compactly together. Thus, the weight of one mail conveyed from Southampton to the East, in 1864, was 46 tons; its measurement was 99 tons, and the weight of the heaviest Eastern mail conveyed viâ Southampton, in 1865, was 49½ tons; its measurement 106½ tons. Weight to bulk in mail bags is nearer to 1 to 4 than to any other quantity. Had the weight (or bulk) of chargeable letters only increased about eight-fold between 1839 and 1855, no doubt the addition to the mails would not have been considerable. But Mr. Page, “no doubt without any intention whatever to mislead,” omits from his calculations matters which it is surprising that an officer of his intelligence and experience should have allowed to escape him. In the first place, he omits the fact that “chargeable letters” were very different in their character in 1855 from what they were in 1839. Then chargeable letters were, as has been stated by Mr. Page, about 7 per cent. of the total weight of the mails, but in 1855 letters quite equal in weight to the weight of those chargeable, viz., parliamentary and official franks, are excluded from Mr. Page’s calculation. It is well known that the correspondence of all the public departments has largely increased in the last thirty years, because, owing to the increased magnitude of the business of the nation, the number of clerks in the old offices has been greatly added to, and because several new branches of the public service have been created. To take a few examples at random. The Steam branch of the Admiralty consisted in 1838 of five or six persons; now, owing to rapid and frequent additions, an immense staff is necessarily connected with it. The Railway and the Navigation, the Education and the Scientific Departments of the Board of Trade, “Science and Art” and South Kensington, the Civil Service Commissioners, &c., have either been created or the staff of each has been added to. So that the substitutes for franks should be included among the letters of the general public, and it is quite certain that the weight and bulk of official letters has kept pace with the weight and bulk of ordinary letters. Between 1839 and 1855, notwithstanding the foot-note about newspapers at page 15, of the Postmaster-General’s Second Report, the number circulating through the post had increased from 44,500,000 to 71,000,000, and although the weight per newspaper had slightly diminished in the interval, still the increased weight of newspapers to be carried by the mails was nearly 50 per cent. over that of 1839.

So far as regards the long established articles of conveyance by the Post Office. Let us now come to those of more modern date. The year before the commencement of the penny postal system, the number of money orders issued was 188,921. In 1855 they had risen to 5,807,412. Now, taking the advices that must be sent to each office upon which an order is issued, the returns that are forwarded daily to the accountant’s office in the metropolis of each part of the United Kingdom in which each Post Office Order has been issued, the remittances unceasingly sent from the provincial offices to the metropolis, and from the metropolis to the provincial offices, the receipts for these remittances and the correspondence which they entail, the weekly advices that are sent to London, and the correspondence connected with them, there were at least twelve millions more of letters or documents from this source in 1855 than there were in 1839. None of these letters or documents does Mr. Page bring into calculation, although, each being official, the certainty is that they are heavier in weight and greater in bulk than a like amount of chargeable letters; all these are carried free in the letter bags. And it is a question that it is not necessary to discuss at present, whether they and the letters and documents (we shall see presently that these are enormous in number, and very great as regards weight) connected with the new services and functions which the Post Office performs, should not be brought into account as a postal charge against the department. The other revenue departments, such, for instance, as the Customs, Inland Revenue, &c., transmit large masses of documents necessary in the transaction of their business with their sub-offices all over the kingdom; but these documents are each subjected to postal charges which are regularly debited in the account of the transmitting department.

In 1839 all expenditure was made by the postmasters throughout the kingdom, and the voucher for each item was retained in their offices.

In 1855 the expenditure was made as heretofore, and as it now continues to be, but instead of the vouchers being retained, every tradesman’s bill and every other item of expenditure that is incurred at a provincial office, no matter how small the item may be, is, with the voucher, sent up to its metropolitan office. To specify the number of these documents would be impossible, but there must be tons weight of them through the post every year.

In 1839 there were no postage stamps. In 1855 the gross revenue of the Post Office was £2,716,420. Taking about a fourth of this amount, or, say £700,000 as the value of those sent through the post for distribution in every post town in the kingdom, their number (in penny stamps) 168,000,000; their dead weight (packed) would be about ten tons, not including the weight of materials in which they were packed, and excluding from the calculation the very considerable number of post office envelopes sent all over the empire, one of which envelopes would weigh as much as two dozen stamps[32].

At the commencement of the new postal system, the number of post offices throughout the United Kingdom was 4,028, of which about a fourteenth, or 300, were head post offices, that is offices sending bags to and receiving bags from London. In 1855 there were 10,498 post offices in the United Kingdom, of which “920[33] were head post offices and 9,578 sub post offices or receiving offices.” Therefore not only had the number of bags going from or coming to London from this one cause been trebled in number, but for the reasons just stated the weight in them had also trebled. In 1839 there were four or five day mails to and from London. In 1855 upwards of fifty, all of which required bags for working them, and their tributary cross posts in every part of the kingdom, but as Mr. Page’s arguments have reference principally to night mails, let them be excluded.

As London is the depôt from which the immense and unceasing supply of new bags for the whole postal system of England and Wales (as Dublin is for Ireland, and Edinburgh for Scotland) is furnished, every one of the bags for the night mails, the day mails, the railway mails, the mail coach mails, the mail cart mails, the horse mails, the foot mails, and the private bag mails, required, in no matter what part of the Kingdom, are considered by the Post Office as postal matters, and are sent post-free accordingly, and when bags are dilapidated or injured they find their way to London, just in the same inexpensive manner as new bags find their way from it. “The supply and repair of mail bags” in England and Wales involve an annual cost of nearly £6,000, exclusive of the cost of supplying and painting the 22,000 to 25,000 mail boxes per annum required for the despatch of our Eastern mails; and one man is borne on the books of the establishment for no other purpose than, as the estimates tell us, to label mail bags. In Ireland there is an annual outlay of £800, in Scotland of £900, for new bags and mendings. In short, empty mail bag transit must have been in 1855 a quarter of all that, whether filled or empty, of 1839.

In 1839 there was one departure a month of the East India mail viâ Marseilles and one viâ Southampton, yet the weight of the mails by the two routes was under five tons, in bulk about twelve tons. In 1855, with two departures a month viâ Marseilles, and two viâ Southampton, the Eastern mails were about twenty tons weight. In 1839 the West India and Brazilian mails were despatched once a month, in the notorious ten-gun “coffins”; yet although the letters were then always sent in triplicate, because the certainty then was that one in three would be lost, and the chances were it might be one in two, nevertheless the letters were only about 200,000 a year; in 1855 they had risen to 700,000. In 1839 letters between Great Britain, the United States, and Canada were conveyed by the American “Liners,” they were under a million per annum; in 1855 they had risen to about 2,500,000, besides letters “in transit” between the United States, Europe, India, China, and Australia.

In 1839 the community had not the benefit of a “British Postal Guide,[34] containing the Chief Public Regulations of the Post Office, with other information, published Quarterly by command of the Postmaster-General.” The first number was issued on the 1st of July, 1855, seven months before Mr. Page wrote his Report. The cost of each number for two or three years was Sixpence. As we learn by the cover that they are “Printed, Published, and Sold by George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty,” and that they are “to be had also of all Booksellers and the Principal Postmasters in the United Kingdom.” It therefore follows that these Postal Guides were, from the date of their first appearance, transmitted by the Railways in the Post Office bags all over the Kingdom. We have seen them, from the earliest period of their publication, exhibited and advertised at the post offices in Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Cork, and other places, and almost every postmaster receives one or more copies for the use of his office. Each number contains 234 pages at present, besides the pages devoted to advertisements, and they cost 2d. each for transmission if sent by book post. In 1858, the price per copy was raised to 1s.; but in 1864 it was reduced to 6d., and the sale has become very great.

But whatever their number or weight was in 1855, it escaped Mr. Page’s recollection to mention them in his comparison between the weights transmitted in that year, and those of 1839.

The foregoing items supply some of the omissions made by Mr. Page in his calculations, and furnish reasons for dissenting from his assertion, that whilst “in 1838 the gross weight of the night mails despatched from London was 4 tons 6 cwt. 1 qr., the total weight of the night mails despatched in a single evening at the present time, may be stated (the italics are ours) at about 12 tons 4 cwt. 3 qrs.”

Mr. Page estimates the gross weight of mails per annum for the entire Kingdom, including guards, clerks, &c., as being considerably under 20,000 tons, “a large portion of which was not conveyed by railway at all.” Mr. Page adds, “Assuming, however, that the whole of it had gone by the railways, it would appear that the Post Office paid 1/23 part of the total earnings for the conveyance of less than a 1/400 part of the total weight.” Mr. Page must excuse us for asserting that the total weight of mails in 1855 was nearer to 80,000 tons than to 20,000, and that by bulk it was nearly 200,000 tons, of which more than half was carried by railway.

Until September 1838, fifty-two horses started every evening from London, with thirteen mail coaches behind them, to convey the mails that are now carried by the Scotch Limited Mail. The weight of mails carried by the coaches was about four tons, their bulk about ten tons measurement. The horses travelled gallantly up hill and down dale over first-class roads at the rate of more than ten miles an hour, and at the end of six or seven miles they were replaced by others of the same mettle. They were guided by thirteen first-class “whips” of the olden time, and no matter what the weather was, or how rough any portion of the road might be temporarily, the great ambition was, not to be a second after time at appointed places. In charge of these four or ten tons, as the case may be, were thirteen guards, to whom the custody of the mails was entrusted. They were responsible for their safe and faithful transmission between St. Martin’s-le-Grand and their destinations.

Each mail coach was considered to require a horse a double mile, to maintain its contract time. As Stafford is 133 miles from London, 133 multiplied by 13 gives the number of horses required, 1,729. The average weight which each mail coach carried was 4 cwt., taken as bulk it was half a ton. The maximum weight that, by the terms of the contract, could be imposed upon it was 15 cwt., a total, for thirteen mails, of 195 cwt.—five less than five tons.

In 1867 one horse—of the railway the iron-clad—invented, not conceived, not created—a living, but lifeless thing—yet withal of terrible power, draws, in addition to the same number of passengers that the fifty-two horses could draw, the mails which are to be carried to Stafford and beyond it. Instead of the weight being four tons, it is often nearly twenty, and instead of bulk being ten, it is seldom less than forty, often fifty, and sometimes it mounts up to even four or five tons further. But no matter, the iron horse is ready to take its load, and does take it at speed four times as great as the speed of thirty years ago.

If we had to go back to mail coaches, and each were only to carry the average of 1837, we should require 100 mail coaches and 13,300 horses; but if each were loaded to its Post Office maximum of former times, then only 27 coaches and 3,591 horses would be requisite. At what cost for 27 coaches? Certainly, the former average of 2½d. a mile would no longer be attainable. More than double would be demanded. 13s. 6d. a mile per diem for 133 miles, multiplied by 365 days, is £32,785. Yet the highest price that the London and North-Western ever had for its night mail service was 4s. the double mile, £9,709.

This is one answer to the assertion of Mr. Page in his report, “Not only, therefore, would penny postage without railways have been both practicable and remunerative, but it would have been even more profitable[35] (assuming the increase of letters) than it is now.”

We learn from Mr. Howell, the Secretary of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Company, that on Australian mail mornings the weight of mails is 46 tons; to carry these at the rate of 15 cwt. per mail coach from London to Southampton, 78 miles, it would he necessary to have 61 coaches and 4,758 horses, besides guards and coachmen. As mails, although not near so heavy as the Australian, are continually arriving at and departing from Southampton, it would be necessary to keep up at least the above stock both of bi-and quadru-peds for these 78 miles, at a cost of about £30,000 a year; but reference to the Post Office estimates will show that the annual payment made by the department to the London and South-Western Company is £21,950, and for that sum the Post Office has the right not only to receive and despatch its sea-going mails, but to use every one of the Company’s trains over the 503 miles which constitute its system, for Post Office inland business. How, it may be asked again, can any officer of the department assert in a report (designated by the Postmaster-General “an able report”) that the penny postage “would have been even more profitable without railways than it now is”?

There is a point in connection with this subject that may as well be referred to here. The Isthmus of Suez Railway[36] was opened for traffic in 1858, the same year that the Australian mail service by way of Egypt was commenced. The India and China mails had increased very rapidly during the few previous years, and the greatest trouble and difficulty were experienced in getting them across the desert. The addition of the Australian mails would have overwhelmed the service, but for the opening of the railway. For let it be asked, What number of camels would be required, or what time would they require to take some fifty tons of mails (adding to the transmissions viâ Southampton, those from England and France viâ Marseilles, and from Germany viâ Trieste) across the desert? By means of the Suez Railway, the cost to this country for the conveyance of the mails outwards and inwards through Egypt is £8,000 a year, and eight Janissaries accompany the mails in both directions, for which they are paid £750 per annum. The cost of a combined army of camels, camel drivers and Janissaries would be at least £60,000 a year, and it would be simply impossible to perform the service satisfactorily.

We think we have demonstrated that even in 1855 the Post Office services of the country must have totally broken down, were it not for railways. But between 1855 and 1865 the postal business has increased enormously. The number of receptacles for letters[37] has risen from 10,498 to 16,246, the number of letters delivered from 456,276,176 to 720,467,007, of newspapers and book parcels,[38] from 71,000,000 to 97,252,766; samples and patterns, an item of Post Office transmission introduced in 1863, 1,286,116. The amount, in money, of the Money Orders issued has increased from £11,009,279[39] to £17,829,290. With the increase comes the concomitant increase of transmissions through the post. The weight of the Eastern mails has risen from 250 tons a year to nearly 2,000.

In 1861, the operations of the Post Office Savings Banks commenced, and by the 31st December, 1865, 3,321 banks had been established all over the kingdom. The total number of persons who had become depositors from the commencement was 857,701, of whom 245,882 had closed their accounts, leaving 611,819 on the books. The total number of deposits received had been 3,895,135. The total withdrawals 1,011,379. Without railways, the operations of those banks could never have been attempted. See what they have to carry? Every person on making his first deposit receives gratis, a numbered book, in which all deposits are to be entered. The weight of this book is about three quarters of an ounce; advice of each deposit is to be sent on the day of its receipt, by the Postmaster to the Post Office, London. The amount of the deposit is to be acknowledged, and the acknowledgment is to be transmitted by post to the receiver. Every depositor’s book must be forwarded each year (even from the remotest part of the kingdom), on the anniversary of the day on which the first deposit was made, to London, in a cover to be obtained at any savings bank. This cover exempts the book from postage charge, and it is also returned free from the London office to the depositor. Every necessary letter of inquiry respecting deposits in savings banks, and their replies are carried by the railways, and travel free of postage. If a depositor want to withdraw a part or the whole of the amount to his credit, he must make application on a form a copy of which can be obtained at any savings bank. It is sent free to London, as also the warrant from London payable at the place named by the applicant. The warrant when paid and receipted is returned by the Postmaster to London.

If the reader will be so good as to multiply the amount of correspondence caused by one depositor, by the total number, viz., 857,701, he will then be able to estimate what is the annual amount of work that is involved in the carrying out of the Post Office Savings Bank system, and also how completely it depends for its success upon railways. It is pleasant—it is more than pleasant—it is deeply gratifying and satisfactory, to know that the business increases, and will continue to increase, for the reason that the humblest classes of the community have now learned to appreciate the facilities which these institutions offer for the safe and fructifying deposit of their little earnings. To Mr. Gladstone is due the honour of their introduction. It was on the 8th of February, 1861, that he presented to the House of Commons the resolution that affirmed the principle upon which they are based, and both Houses of Parliament responded so promptly, that by the 17th of May following, an Act, the title of which is, “An Act to grant additional facilities for depositing small savings at interest with the security of the Government[40] for the due repayment thereof,” received the Royal assent. Mr. Gladstone, you have done many great and many good acts in your time, but you have never done one greater or better than this.[41]

The Government Insurance and Annuities Act, which received the Royal assent on the 14th July, 1864, enables persons proposing to effect insurances on their lives, or to purchase deferred monthly allowances, to transmit their proposals, and to send and receive all correspondence between themselves and the Post Office relating to their proposals free of all postal charges. The Postmaster-General is compelled to admit, in his Twelfth Report, that the proposals, from their bulk, “present a somewhat formidable appearance.” But, thanks to railways, these formidable-looking documents go free through the post. So do also their acknowledgments from head quarters; the numerous and minute inquiries made to friends and medical referees as to the proposer’s age, health, habits, and occupation, likewise the replies to all these inquiries. If these replies are deemed satisfactory, a letter is transmitted to the proposer, post free, directing him to present himself for examination to a medical man, and the report of the latter often leads to much correspondence, all of which goes without postal charge. If the proposer be rejected he is informed accordingly by a free letter, and there is an end of the matter; but if he be accepted, the insurance or annuity contract is sent to the Post Office at which the proposer desires to receive it, and he is apprised to that effect by another free letter. The system is in its infancy as yet, but the postal transmissions which it will involve, even at its greatest, will never be of the same extent as those connected with the Post Office Savings Banks. Nevertheless, they will be considerable, for every payment to an annuitant, and every receipt of money from a person assured, must be transmitted either from or to London, as the case may be. So that, in addition to the proposals of the “somewhat formidable appearance,” thousands of documents per annum in connection with that business will find their way into the mail bags.

Let us hark back to say that no rejoinder to Mr. Stephenson’s answer was ever given. Nevertheless, the answer, complete and conclusive as it was, had no effect on Post Office intentions, for during the session of 1857, the Duke of Argyll,[42] then Postmaster-General, was induced by the permanent officers of the establishment to introduce a bill into the House of Lords for making “further Provision for the Conveyance of Mails by Railway.” Mr. William Lewins[43] tells us, in his book called Her Majesty’s Mail, that His Grace deserves the gratitude of his country for introducing it. But it was well known that His Grace, like most of the Postmasters-General who have preceded him during the last twenty years, took but little interest in the working of the department over which he nominally presided, and knew little, probably nothing, of the bill, the obnoxious contents of which he was called upon to father.

It was, however, justly viewed with great apprehension by all the railway interests of the kingdom, and in consequence of the hostility excited by its appearance, it was withdrawn before it reached a second reading. In the very lame defence of it, given in the Fourth Annual Report, we find it mildly stated, that “taken as a whole, the bill certainly cannot fairly be represented as a measure opposed to railway interests.” Whether this be correct or not, at all events it can be stated that the department has never since proposed any similar enactment. From 1858 it has also ceased to use language such as “experience has satisfied me, that as the law now stands, it is impossible either to secure regularity in the conveyance of the mails, or to have that full use of the railways which the public demand, which the department is anxious to afford, and which would be beneficial to the companies themselves.”[44] The relations between the companies and the department have been amicable during the last seven or eight years, and there is now scarcely a railway in the kingdom upon which mails are conveyed that has not adopted a system of general contracts. The Post Office acquires, by means of them, the right, for a fixed gross payment per annum, of using all the trains of the company for the transport of mail bags. There are certain trains which of course must be run for the convenience of the Post Office, such as the night mail trains to and from London, with their branch trains and ramifications. The same as regards Dublin, and, in a lesser degree, Edinburgh. But the expenses of these trains to the companies is considered in coming to a decision as to the total price to be paid. These arrangements are based altogether upon the voluntary principle, but when agreed to, they are necessarily embodied in legal contracts.

We have no earlier return of postal railway mileage than 1855; that was at the height of the antagonism with the Post Office. The miles run were then 27,109 per diem, but so rapidly had friendly arrangements been entered into, that in 1862 (the last year for which a mileage return is published) it had risen to 49,782 miles per diem. Had these returns been continued to the present time, they would have exhibited an increase to 60,000 per diem, for in 1863, there were three hundred and ninety-three towns having a night and day mail from London, fifty having 3 mails daily from London, seven having 4, three having 3, and three having 4. But in 1865, the number had increased as follows: four hundred and ten having a night and day mail from London, fifty-seven having 3 daily from London, nine having 4, and six having 5.

The gross sum paid by the Post Office to the railways of the United Kingdom in 1866 was £570,500, only £170,500 more than, as Mr. Page states, were paid to railways in 1855; but at that time the Post Office, with only few exceptions, did not run more than one day and one night mail train in each direction on the greater portion of the 8,280 miles which then constituted the railway system of the kingdom; but on the first of January, 1866, the railway system was 13,289 miles, over about 12,000 miles of which, the Post Office was able by its contracts, to send mail bags by whatever trains, whether goods or passenger, they chose to select from. At the present time (as already stated) the railway service of the Post Office cannot be less than 60,000 miles a day[45].

The following statement exhibits the amount paid by the Post Office to the Railway Companies of the United Kingdom in 1866, together with the mileage length of most of them. Of the total sum of £570,500, the London and North-Western, with its 1,320 miles of railway, naturally earns the largest share, £132,997. The other railways come as follows:—Great Western (1,311 miles), £50,789; North Eastern (1,229), £41,397; North British (732), £8,696; Great Eastern (710), £22,357; Midland (695), £44,600; Caledonian (574), £29,101; London and South-Western (503), £21,950; Great Northern (441), £9,805; Lancashire and Yorkshire (403), £6,500; South Eastern (330), £23,571; London, Brighton and South Coast (320), £1,977; Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire (246), £2,618; North Staffordshire (144), £1,000; Bristol and Exeter (134), £9,888; Cambrian (130), £2,413; South Devon (110), £7,485; London, Chatham and Dover (94), £268; Brecon and Merthyr (68), £50; Cornwall (66), £5,500; Taff Vale (63), £1,000; Shrewsbury and Hereford (51), £2,030; Llanelly (46), £39; Monmouthshire (44), £147; Birkenhead (43), £2,500; North Union (40), £4,878; Maryport and Carlisle (28), £841; West Cornwall (27), £1,500; Isle of Wight (12), £31; Whitehaven Junction (6½), £363. There were not any contracts in 1866 with the Furness Company (85), the Somerset and Dorset (66), nor with the Metropolitan Underground (4¾), but the Post Office has recently entered into contracts for the conveyance of mails on the first and the third of the three.

The foregoing, with some payments to minor companies, make the total which the English and Welsh Companies receive from the Post Office, £407,512. Some of these minor companies, however, are not over-handsomely paid; for instance, the Colne Valley, 6½ miles long, receives the modest sum of £15 a year; the Tenbury, 5¼ miles long, which nevertheless has a Board of Directors consisting of seven members, and is presided over by a noble Baron, receives only £7. Never having heard of the Pontop and Jarrow Railway, we looked in all the usual sources of information without success, but we perceive by the Post Office estimates that the company earns £5 a-year for the services it renders to the department. If the amounts paid by the Post Office to English Railways be divided by its total mileage, it makes the average payment per mile per annum to them a little less than £58.

The Irish railways receive £84,508 per annum from the Post Office, of which the Great Southern and Western (420 miles), obtains £29,500; the Midland Great Western (261), £14,920; Irish North-Western (145), £1,540; Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford (107), £4,700; Ulster (106), £5,800; Belfast and Northern Counties (100), £2,950; Great Northern and Western (83), £2,349; Waterford and Limerick (77), £3,150; Dublin and Drogheda (75), £4,700; Dublin and Belfast Junction (63), £6,000; Londonderry and Enniskillen (60), £3,150; Belfast and County Down (44), £206; Londonderry and Coleraine (36), £1,300; Cork and Youghal (34), £1,150; Waterford and Kilkenny (31), £486; Cork and Limerick direct (25), £50; Cork and Bandon (20), £757. There are three companies that only receive £30 each, and two have twice as much as the Pontop and Jarrow. They have £10 each. The average Post Office payment per mile (assuming that the Post Office sent mails by all the railways in Ireland, which is not the case) is about £44. 10s.

The Scotch railways receive £78,482, of which the North British and Edinburgh and Glasgow (748) has £8,696; Caledonian (573), £29,101; Scottish Central and Scottish North-Eastern (459), £22,136; Great North of Scotland; (257), £3,830; Glasgow and South-Western (249), £3,436; the Highland Railway (245), £10,454. The average per mile per annum paid to Scotch railways by the Post Office, assuming that it availed itself of the whole of them, is £36.

There is no branch of the connection between the railways and the Post Office in which the former has gained more conspicuously than in that of speed;[46] and precisely the same may also be said with respect to the general community.

As has already been stated, the average speed of mail coaches was a little under ten miles an hour in 1837, that of stage coaches under eight, that of waggons two; and that the latter were used in the middle of the last century, at all events, we have pictorial evidence, through the pencil of Hogarth, and written testimony from the writings of his contemporaries, as well as from those of subsequent men of letters.

The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, substituted between its two termini an average speed of 17 miles an hour. Speed has increased steadily year by year, as we shall now endeavour to make manifest.

In 1842 the night mail train left Euston Station at 8·30 p.m., and reached Lancaster (241 miles) at 7·0 a.m. Since the 1st of October, 1860, the Scotch Limited Mail leaves Euston Station every evening at 8·35 p.m., it arrives at Perth at 8·59 a.m. the next day; the distance is 449 miles, and it is performed, including ten stoppages, at the rate of 37½ miles an hour. There were more stoppages for mail trains in 1840 than since 1860, but, apart from this fact, the time that the mail train required to complete 449 miles is the same as that which it required to complete only 15 miles more than half that distance, twenty years previously.

The Irish express mail completes the journey from London to Holyhead (263 miles), with three stoppages only, for passenger accommodation, in 6 hours 40 minutes, or at the rate of 38½ miles an hour.

For a short run, involving only one stoppage for the engine to take water, the most rapid on the narrow gauge[47] in England is between London and Dover, by the South-Eastern Railway, 88 miles in 2 hours and 5 minutes, 42 miles an hour. But on Australian mail nights (the 26th of each month), the Post Office employs, in addition to the ordinary “down” mail, a special one for the conveyance of such bags and boxes as can be got ready by 7 p.m. This train travels between London and Dover in 1 hour and 45 minutes. There is one stop for water. The rate of speed, including the stop, is a little over 50 miles an hour, excluding it, the rate is 54.

There is a train on the Great Western, which although not carrying mails, is the fastest in England. It completes the distance from London to Exeter, 194 miles, with 4 stops, amounting to 20 minutes, in 4½ hours; or at the rate of 43 miles an hour. A little more than a quarter of the time occupied by the “Quicksilver” Mail in the olden days; but the “Quicksilver” only went over 160 miles, the roadway distance between London and Exeter, or 24 miles less than by the Great Western and Bristol and Exeter Railways.

The grandest exceptional run ever made on railways was on the 5th January, 1862, the occasion being, when answers were brought to the despatches sent to Washington, requiring the surrender of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had been taken out of the “Trent,” Royal West India Mail Steamer, by orders of Commodore Wilks. The steamer arrived at Queenstown at 10·5 p.m.: at 11·28 p.m., Irish time,[48] the special train started from Cork, and accomplished the journey to Dublin (166 miles) in four hours and three minutes; or at the rate of 41 miles an hour, including stoppages. The mail steamer “Ulster” arrived at Holyhead at 8·15 a.m. The special train started at 8·28, and it is from this point that the most remarkable part of the express journey was accomplished. The run from Holyhead to Stafford, 130½ miles, occupied only 145 minutes, being at the rate of 54 miles an hour, and although so high a rate of speed was not attempted over the more crowded parts of the line approaching London, the whole distance from Holyhead to Euston was performed by the London and North-Western Company in exactly five hours, or at a speed of 52¾ miles an hour—a speed unparalleled for so long a distance on a line crowded with traffic. By means of the invention for supplying the tender with water from a trough in transitu, respecting which details will be given in a subsequent page, the engine was enabled to run from Holyhead to Stafford without pulling-up to take water. This is the longest run ever made by an engine without stopping; but the engines of the Irish Limited Mail Trains, owing to this trough, run twice a day in each direction without stopping, between Holyhead and Chester, 84½ miles. The weight of these trains, exclusive of the engine and tender, is fully 80 tons; but the weight of the American special express, exclusive of engine and tender, did not exceed 20.

A few words with respect to the fastest trains on the Continent. Previous to the 1st of April of this year, the mail trains between Calais and Paris completed 203 miles, with 15 minutes of stoppages for passenger accommodation, in 5 hours and 50 minutes, about 33¼ miles an hour. Since the opening of the railway between Calais and Boulogne, the mail trains go to and come from Paris viâ Boulogne. The distance is shortened to 186 miles, and the journey is performed, 15 minutes of stoppages for passenger accommodation being allowed, in 5½ hours, or at the rate of 34 miles an hour.

The “Rapide,” the night mail train from Paris to Marseilles, completes 537 miles in 15 hours 45 minutes, or at the rate, for this long journey, of 34 miles an hour. The day mail train from Paris to Bordeaux takes 10½ hours, a distance of 366 miles, or at the rate of 34¼ miles an hour. It is the fastest mail or express train in France that goes over a large extent of railway mileage, but its pace is 3¼ miles an hour less than the Scotch Limited Mail as far as Perth, 4¼ less than that of the Irish Express Mail, and 8¾ less than the express train of the Great Western from London to Exeter.

There is, however, one train in France that travels more rapidly for a short distance,—the 1·0 p.m. express from Paris to Rouen. It completes 85 miles without a stoppage in 2 hours 22 minutes, or at the rate of 35½ miles an hour. Comparing this speed with that of the London and Dover express mail trains, it is less by 6½ miles an hour.

There are two express mail trains in Belgium analagous to those between London and Dover. They are the fastest in that kingdom. They complete the 78 miles between Brussels and Ostend in 2 hours and 17 minutes, with 3 short stoppages, or, at the rate of about 34¼ miles an hour.

There is a double daily postal service between Cologne and Berlin. The distance, 391 miles, is accomplished in 12½ hours, or at the rate of a little more than 31½ miles an hour, including stoppages for the refreshment of the passengers, amounting to nearly an hour on the whole journey.

It is a fact well known to railway officials of all grades, but not appreciated by the public, that it is much more difficult to keep time with trains stopping at many stations, than with express trains. Yet the explanation is very easy. People who travel by stopping trains are of totally different habits from those who travel by express. The greater part of the passengers of the former belong to the agricultural classes; and it is just this,—the farmer is not accustomed to be hurried, and he won’t be hurried, neither are the farmer’s wife, the farmer’s sons, the farmer’s daughters; the tradesman in farming towns and villages is like the farmer, he won’t be hurried, and it is the same with the tradesman’s wife, his sons and his daughters; neither will the workman, nor the workman’s wife, nor his sons, nor his daughters, be hurried and flurried. In fact, no one is ever in a hurry, except in large towns and cities. The country was not made for people who are always in a hurry, therefore it is impossible to get country people in and out of trains with the same speed as railway servants can manage with town and city people, and the effect of all this is, a stopping train is, much more frequently than “fast” or express trains, unpunctual, and it is especially so when it exceeds very much its ordinary amount of traffic. It is then sure to be very late, solely from circumstances beyond the control of the company, but of course the company gets all the discredit of the delay. On the other hand, express trains call only at a few first-class stations, and all the passengers’ business can be satisfactorily and comfortably accomplished in the time that the train is compelled to stop while the engine is taking in fuel and water. Let it not be imagined that in this respect “they manage things better in France.” It has been occasionally our misfortune to travel by stopping trains, not only in France, but in other parts of Europe. There is one of two undeviating and unvarying rules with regard to them. Either they are unpunctual, or they are timed for so slow a speed, and with such delays at stations, that unpunctuality by them is impossible. There are many passenger trains on the continent that do not average a running speed of more than fourteen or fifteen miles an hour.

CHAPTER V.

RAILWAYS AND THE POST OFFICE, CONTINUED.

We had written, in the previous chapter, all that relates to the Post Office, in the belief that the relations between that department and the railways had been, during recent years, of an amicable character. We regret however to find that, in this respect, we have been mistaken. The amicable relations exist, on the part of the Post Office, on the surface only, no deeper. The same antagonistic spirit flourishes, at all events in the minds of some of the officials, as resolutely as ever.

Our readers will perhaps remember that, on the 11th March, 1865, a Royal Commission was issued, nominating the Duke of Devonshire, the late Earl of Donoughmore, Lord Stanley, M.P., the Hon. E. F. Leverson Gower, M.P., the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P., Sir Rowland Hill, Messrs. Roebuck, M.P., Dalglish, M.P., G. C. Glyn, M.P., Ayrton, M.P., Colonel Douglas Dalton, R.E., Mr. E. T. Hamilton, and Mr. J. R. McClean, C.E., to make various inquiries respecting railways.

On the 19th of December following, a new commission was issued in substitution of the previous one, Mr. Monsell, M.P., being added to the number of Commissioners. The Earl of Donoughmore died shortly after it was issued; and, in consequence of Lord Stanley having become Secretary of State for India, he did not act for more than a short time. The report, dated the 7th of May, 1867, is therefore not signed by His Lordship.

It will not be necessary to follow this report, or to refer to the general recommendations contained in it. Some are very good, and would no doubt be readily agreed to by most railway companies, if they were to take the shape of legislative enactment. Others are impracticable (such as that suggested for ensuring punctuality of trains), and like impracticable notions and ideas at all times, they “fret their little hour on the stage,” and then cease to be heard of afterwards.

The evidence taken is voluminous; some of it is of a very desultory character, several of the witnesses having seized the occasion to vent their own peculiar theories, and, sicut eorum mos est, to inculcate the adoption of their specific or nostrum as the infallible remedy. The appendices, notwithstanding the introduction of much matter that is irrelevant for all large and practical purposes, contain a great deal of useful information.

The great and main recommendation in the report is contained in the 74th clause; it is therefore given in extenso. “On the various grounds we have mentioned, we cannot concur in the expediency of the purchase of the railways by the State, and we are of opinion that it is inexpedient at present to subvert the policy which has hitherto been adopted, of leaving the construction and management of railways to the free enterprise of the people, under such conditions as Parliament may think fit to impose for the general welfare of the public.”

“As regards the purchase of Irish railways,” the Commissioners add, at clause 80, “having come to the determination that it is inexpedient that the railways should be purchased by the State, we consider there is not sufficient reason for excepting Ireland from this general conclusion; but, as it has been the established policy to assist Irish railways and other public works in Ireland, we recommend that when Parliament thinks fit to make advances to Irish railway companies, the money should be lent for a fixed period of considerable length, so as to enable the company to develop its resources before it is called on for repayment.”

The Commissioners add, that these advances or loans should never be made to Irish railway companies on condition that their rates and fares should be reduced, that being a matter, the decision upon which should rest exclusively with the executive of the company.

The two dissentients from the report were Mr. Monsell, M.P., and Sir Rowland Hill. Mr. Monsell being of opinion that the Irish railways should be purchased by the State, and to this extent agreeing with Sir Rowland Hill, whose opinion is that the railways of the whole kingdom should become, by purchase, the property of the nation.

Sir Rowland Hill gives various reasons in recommendation of this suggestion, and summarises in his report, written, as we learn by its first paragraph, “in a growing expectation of dissent,” his reasons with the following language:—

“In short, experience has now shown that railways are essentially monopolies; consequently they are, in my opinion, not suitable objects for ordinary commercial enterprise, in which each party, while striving for its own interests, generally contributes, perhaps in the best possible way, to the interest of all. It seems to follow that they cannot be advantageously left to independent companies, who, of course, manage them with exclusive reference to their own interests, but that they should be in the hands of those who will control the management of them with a view to the interest of the country at large, that is to say, in the hands of the Government.

“Proposing this, however, I do not mean to recommend that any Government Board should take upon itself, in the gross, the duty now performed by railway directors. For the direct management of the lines, I propose to provide by leasing them out, in convenient groups, to companies, partnerships, or individuals, as the case may be. An opinion in favour of leasing the lines will be found in the evidence given by Mr. Bidder before this Commission.

“What I recommend is, that either a department of Government should be created, or the superintendence of railways committed to one of the existing departments, and that the controlling power, thus established, should act as a lessor, not only in granting leases, but in fixing suitable terms and enforcing due observance of contract.”

As Sir Rowland Hill was the only person of the fifteen Commissioners who subscribed to the doctrines advanced in the foregoing paragraph, it will be an unnecessary occupation of time to comment upon them.

The two chief witnesses upon whom Sir Rowland Hill relies are, his brother, Mr. Frederick Hill, an Assistant Secretary of the Post Office, and Mr. Edward J. Page, the Inspector-General of Mails. A considerable portion of Sir Rowland’s plan is quoted as forming part of the evidence of Mr. Hill, and we shall only say of that gentleman just at present, although we shall have much to say to him presently, that if he had even a tyro’s knowledge of the working of railways he would not have put forward the string of the assumed “benefits” which he asserts will be realised by his views being adopted.

To us, however, it appears very clearly, that if we lay aside all arguments, reasoning, plans, and suggestions but one, we will come to the real reason for Sir Rowland Hill recommending the purchase of railways by the State. It is that the Post Office may thereby acquire that complete control, and that complete mastery in respect of railways which the rights of property can alone give it over them. Mr. Page aids him by his evidence and assertions, in a manner that has compelled us to state in the opening paragraph of this chapter, that the friendly relations existing between the Post Office and the Railway, are, as regards the department, on the surface only. In its heart (if the Post Office have a heart) its feelings of rancour are just as uncompromising as ever they were.

But let us state, in the first instance, what are the opinions of the Royal Commissioners on the relations between the Post Office and the Railways. They are contained in the following extract from their report:—

“134. In connection with the passenger traffic we have to consider the question of postal communication.

“On the continental railways, as we have observed, the Government has conceded the lines to the companies on the condition that the mails are to be carried free. On the railways of this country, Parliament has reserved to the Post Office the right of requiring the railway companies to carry the mails as the Postmaster-General may direct, but has reserved to the railway companies the right to be paid for such service at a rate to be fixed by arbitration. The Postmaster-General is also at liberty to send a Post Office guard with a weight of mails equal to the luggage of an ordinary passenger, at the fares charged for such ordinary passenger, any extra weight being paid for according to the ordinary rates of the company.

“The Post Office authorities complain that the price they have to pay, under many of the arbitrations, for services rendered, is in excess of what individuals pay for such services, and that if guards are sent in charge of the mails as baggage, the railway companies insist that the guard can only carry the baggage from one end of his journey to the other, without intermediate receipt and delivery, and that, therefore, when they desire to use the trains by sending a guard with mail bags, without putting the trains under the statutory notice, the demands of the railway companies are exorbitant. They also state that they cannot require a company to run a train exclusively for their use, and that the law is defective as to the speed they are entitled to require, and as to the provision of apparatus for exchanging mail bags without stopping.

“The railway companies, on the other hand, complain that whilst by law the award should bind both parties for three years, the Post Office practically possesses the power of at once putting an end to it, if they consider it too high, by requiring some alteration of service, which may be a mere nominal alteration, and thus the Post Office may go on asking for fresh arbitrations until they get an award to their liking. The Post Office authorities deny that there has been any abuse of this power. The railway companies further complain that, by means of the book and parcel post, the Post Office has entered into competition with the railway companies for an important branch of their traffic.

“The Post Office is anxious that a fixed tariff for the conveyance of mails should be introduced into Acts of Parliament. The experience which has been already acquired must, by this time, suffice to enable a fair and remunerative tariff to be affixed to every service required to be rendered by the ordinary trains of the company, and the only reason why some fixed scale does not appear to have been adopted by some general Act is, that the Post Office has never urged it upon the consideration of Parliament on a satisfactory basis for legislation.

“It is quite clear, however, that at the present time legislative interference in this question has either gone too far or not far enough. If the Post Office had originally been left free to make its bargains with railway companies, it would probably have obtained greater facilities at lower rates than it now possesses, for the railway companies largely benefit by postal communication, and the feeling of the directors would obviously be to assist it; but the fact of the service being compulsory, to some extent neutralises such a feeling.

“We recommend, as the best course under existing circumstances, that a general Act of Parliament be passed to define all those points which have given rise to difficulties between the Postmaster-General and the railway companies; but we do not deem it expedient to enter into the details of the arrangements to be embodied in the Act. We merely point out that these services may be classed under two heads, viz.,—first, services analagous to services rendered to the public; secondly, services in trains to be run at special hours to be fixed by the Postmaster-General.

“The first class, viz.: services by trains when railway companies fix the time of starting and stopping, may be grouped under the following heads, viz.,—first, mails in charge of railway companies without Post Office guards; second, mails in charge of guards on Post Office responsibility; third, compartments, or one or more carriages.

“For this class of services a tariff might be fixed by a general Act. And if the Postmaster-General were to enter into communication with the railway companies, we see no reason to doubt that an equitable scale for these services would be agreed upon.

“For the second class of services, viz.: where the Postmaster-General fixes the time of starting or stopping, or requires an exclusive or limited train, the question of the proper remuneration for the service performed should still be left to arbitration.

“We have no evidence that the provisions of the Act which we have quoted in a former part of our report, allowing the Postmaster-General to override an award which is otherwise binding on a railway company, have ever been abused by him. We think such a power necessary for the public interests, and have not, therefore, suggested any alteration of the law in this respect.

“Another branch of traffic carried on in passenger trains, is the conveyance of parcels. The railway companies complain that the Post Office abstracts from them a large portion of this class of traffic, by means of the parcel post. The Post Office contend that the necessity for extending the parcel post has arisen from the inefficient way in which the railway companies have performed the parcel service; and the services which the Post Office under its Acts of Parliament is entitled to perform, seem to be limited to printed and written matter, and patterns.

“We think that there is a plain and obvious distinction between the service rendered by the Post Office in the conveyance of letters and printed matter, and that rendered by railway companies in conveyance of parcels. The Postmaster-General not only enjoys by law an exclusive monopoly of the conveyance of all letters, but he is also entirely protected from all responsibility for any default in the service which the Post Office undertakes to render to the public, and correspondents are left to rely, in the last resort, on the protection of the severe penal laws against the servants of the Post Office.

“We do not think it would be possible to apply this principle to the conveyance of parcels throughout the country.

“There is this further consideration, that the weight of letters received and delivered in each separate packet is exceedingly small, both in weight and bulk, as compared with the bulk and weight of railway parcels, which extend up to 112 lbs., and require, therefore a different organisation for receipt, delivery, and forwarding.

“So long as a railway company is paid a reasonable rate for the transmission of mails, they have no reason to complain of the extension of Post Office service.

“The expense lies in the collection and delivery, and it is quite competent to railway companies to organise a system of collection and delivery, and to compete with the Post Office by carrying parcels on the same terms.

“It is, moreover, to be remarked, that railway companies are not bound to carry parcels, nor is there any tariff for parcels, fixing charges for collection and delivery, in Acts of Parliament. The public is, therefore, at their mercy. We consider that a separate tariff should be laid down and published to govern the conveyance as distinguished from the collection and delivery of parcels, so as to enable the rates of charge to be kept down by the free action of individuals acting as carriers by railway.

“It is, however, apparent that the parcel service so far as interchange is concerned, can never be efficiently performed for the public until railway companies co-operate through the clearing house, to improve their arrangements for parcel traffic. Looking at the extent to which the railway system has now reached, we consider that the time has arrived when railway companies should combine to devise some rapid and efficient system for the delivery of parcels. We do not feel called upon to suggest the precise manner in which this may be carried into effect; but the employment of a uniform system of adhesive labels for parcels, somewhat similar to that now in use on some of the northern lines for the conveyance of newspapers, is one of the most obvious methods for facilitating payment and accounting. If the railway companies do not combine voluntarily, it may be necessary at some future time for Parliament to interfere to make the obligation to carry parcels compulsory, at a rate to be prescribed by law.

“On the companies effecting such an arrangement, we recommend that a general Act should be passed limiting their liability for each parcel to a certain amount, unless a greater value be declared and paid for, according to a settled scale, at the time of transmission, and that such further provisions should be made as may be found necessary to enable the companies to carry out their arrangements.”

It will thus be seen that ten of the Royal Commissioners—the members of the Commission who would not be likely to be influenced by what may be called a departmental view of the subject—whilst stating the case both for and against the railway companies, as well as for and against the Post Office, limit their recommendation to the passing of a general Act to define the points which have given rise to difficulties; to which, at page 59 of their report, they add that “in cases where the Postmaster-General fixes the time of starting or stopping, or requires an exclusive or limited train, the question of the proper remuneration for the service should still be left to arbitration.”

And the Commissioners, whilst very clearly denying the expediency of the Post Office becoming carriers of railway parcels, some of which “extend up to 112 lbs., and require therefore a different organisation for receipt, delivery, and forwarding,” confine themselves to recommending railways to “combine for devising some rapid and efficient system for the delivery of parcels.”

A correct view certainly. We are now desirous of offering some remarks upon the part of the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners which refers to a tariff being fixed by a general Act for the various classes of services required of railways by the Post Office. It would, we are convinced, be impossible to pass an Act of this class that would be of the slightest practical value, because the circumstances of every railway company, certainly of every district of country through which a railway passes, are of constant variance. We need not go farther for evidence of this fact, than in the successive annual reports of Postmasters-General. Until 1862 each of them contained statements of the railway, horse, and foot mileage employed by the Post Office, and each item was subdivided into maximum, average, and minimum, not only for the United Kingdom, but for each component part of it. As may be imagined, the difference between maximum price and minimum on railways, were not only very striking, but they are also equally striking for the two other means of locomotion, especially so for foot messengers; these last varied—no doubt still continue to vary—from a farthing a mile (not enough we should have thought to pay for sole, to say nothing of upper-shoe-leather) to sixpence a mile. To this let be added what any person who reads Post Office documents will see constantly quoted, that before the opening of the railway from Carlisle to Glasgow, the proprietors of the coach that carried the mail between these two places, paid £200 a year for the privilege. It was because there was then a violent, and as it turned out to be, destructive competition on the road, but at the time it lasted, the Post Office was paying as high as, if we recollect correctly, 1s. 3d. a double mile for mail coach conveyance in another part of the country.

The Commissioners recommend arbitration in case of difference, when the Post Office requires an exclusive or limited train, and it seems that the extension of the principle to all matters of negotiation, when the parties cannot agree, affords the best means of arriving at a just and equitable solution. Arbitration, however, with the railways has always been the bête noire of the department.

Mr. Frederick Hill, having informed the Commissioners that he anticipates (“anticipations” to which Sir Rowland Hill says, “I concur”) “greater securities against accidents, and also, against assaults and robberies on railways (query, in railway trains?), by the establishment of a uniform system of signals (!), and by clauses in the leases imposing penalties for unpunctuality and other irregularities (what?), and requiring that means should always be provided for enabling passengers to communicate readily with the guard,” winds up the list of “benefits” which the nation is to obtain from purchase as follows:—“Additional facilities for the conveyance of the mails, with a consequent increase in the number of posts, and in the celerity of communication, and the removal of the chief difficulty in the establishment of a parcels post.”

If the reader will please to refer ante to page 106, he will see the number of postal services there are daily only between London and other post towns. Their name is legion, and we are indebted for the information given upon this subject exclusively to Post Office documents. In Liverpool,[49] there are either six or seven collections a day for Manchester,[50] and a like, or very nearly a like number at Manchester for Liverpool and intermediate towns, so that, for postal purposes, Liverpool and Manchester are practically the same town. And so it is with the great net-work of towns in the north of England, as well as with towns in every other part of the country, north, south, east, or west. We confess to the weakness that if we are in a country town or village, we cannot pass the post office without having a look at the notice in the window, telling for what places and at what hours mails are made up and despatched, and from what places and at what hours mails arrive for delivery: we are therefore in the position of being able to state that despatches and deliveries are innumerable in the vicinity of railways; away from them, the collections and deliveries are at most twice a day, frequently not more than once.

“Celerity of communication.” If Mr. Hill will refer to page 58 of the Royal Commissioners’ Report, he will see that the average speed of the quickest trains in England (those by which the great mails are conveyed) is 36½ miles an hour; the average for similar trains in France is 31 miles, and in other states of Europe it varies from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 30. The speed of our fastest trains is stated at page 109, et seq.

We must also request Mr. Hill to refer to the whole series of Postmaster-Generals’ Reports. Every one of them contains paragraphs under the heading “Accelerations,” but in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, there are no less than seven and a-half pages devoted exclusively to this one subject. In the Tenth Report (undated, but bearing internal evidence of its being intended for the year 1862), it is stated, “a statement of all the accelerations which have been effected within the last ten years, or even a list of all the places in the United Kingdom which have now an earlier arrival, or a later despatch of letters than were afforded to them in 1854, would show conclusively that the Post Office has, during that period, laboured strenuously and successfully to meet the demands of the public. But such statements would be confusing from the multiplicity of their details.” The Postmaster-General therefore confines himself to alluding “to the acceleration of the Scotch mails, which took place in 1859; to that of the Irish mails, which took place in 1860; and to that of the French mails which also took place in the year 1860.” These accelerations are so great, and bear so importantly upon the correspondence of the whole kingdom, not only inter se, but with the whole continent of Europe, that each is very completely and elaborately described. In the report for 1864, the Postmaster-General, in addition to mentioning several important accelerations, refers, in a triumphant tone, to the advantages which have been gained to the public by the adoption of railways for conveyance of mails in various districts both of Scotland and Ireland; and in the report for 1865, equal satisfaction is expressed, because most important accelerations were made in the speed of all the main postal trains throughout Ireland. This part of the report concludes as follows. “Contracts for the general use of all ordinary trains were entered into with the Great Southern and Western, the Dublin and Drogheda, and the Dublin and Belfast Railway Companies; and the contract with the Ulster Railway Company was extended. It was chiefly by means of these contracts that the improvements effected in the mail service in Ireland during 1865, were greater than they had been in any previous year for a considerable time past.”

The foregoing is the language used in the three latest annual reports of the department, the last of which was written about the time that Mr. Hill must have been submitting to the Royal Commissioners his reasons why the nation would benefit by the purchase of the railways. And here let us mention a belief which exists in the Office, that for several years previous to the present year, the Postmaster-General’s Reports have been drafted by Mr. Hill. This belief, however, cannot be correct, as it is not to be supposed that Mr. Hill would blow hot and cold, and write white and black at one and the same time.

“Celerity of communication” (to again quote Mr. Hill’s words), “can only take place by increased celerity of trains.” We believe that in the present state of our knowledge we have acquired on railways in this country, the maximum that can be accomplished consistent with safety; and we say in all seriousness, that if Mr. Hill be not content with it, and that the Postal Department insist upon higher speed, he ought, in order to be consistent, also to insist upon being placed on the fore-buffer of the engine, and thus to substitute himself for the director, about whom the late Sydney Smith wrote so pleasantly some years ago. If a Postmaster-General were also required to travel in mail trains, Mr. Darby Griffiths would, we should suppose, no longer experience (at all events in the House of Lords) the fatal difficulties which led to the rejection some four years back, of his Bill to revive for Members of the House of Commons the right of holding the office of Postmaster-General. Nay, it is very probable that the most serious opposition would be found in the House, upon which, on the previous occasion, he was so anxious to confer the privilege.

Before quoting in full the recommendations of Sir Rowland Hill, as regards railways and the Post Office, it is desirable to draw attention to the fact, somewhat remarkable, that the only persons upon whom Sir Rowland Hill relies for proving his case as regards the Post Office, are his Brother, Mr. Edward J. Page, and our esteemed friend Mr. Charles Hutton Gregory, C.E., who is “the arbitrator (should not the word be ‘referee’?) for the Post Office.” It certainly appears strange, that official testimony of a somewhat more independent character should not have been produced. Assuming that the Duke of Montrose had not acquired sufficient knowledge of the working of the system, there is Lord Stanley of Alderley. His Lordship was Post-master-General for six years, and only retired upon the present Government coming into office eighteen months ago. Mr. Tilley, the Chief Secretary, has been connected with the department for a great many years, so has Mr. Scudamore, admittedly the most distinguished man in the service. The evidence of several of the district surveyors would have been valuable; but not one of them was called to corroborate, or to add to the testimony of Messrs. Hill, Page, and Gregory, the spirit of which testimony is manifest, even in the Index of Evidence, as published in the Appendix.

Sir Rowland Hill proceeds thus:—

“On reference to the evidence of Mr. Frederic Hill, Assistant-Secretary to the Post Office, Mr. Edward Page, the Inspector-General of Mails, and Mr. Gregory, C.E., the Arbitrator for the Post Office, it will be seen that the laws regulating the relations between the railways and the Post Office are, at present in a state unsatisfactory to both parties; the dissonance necessarily producing inconvenience to the public, owing to the restrictions which it places on the use of trains for conveying mails, and the consequent impediments to the extension of postal facilities.

“I concur with Mr. Frederic Hill, in recommending that, as fast as lines become national property, clauses be inserted in the respective leases, entitling the Post Office to such use of the lines as may be necessary for its purposes, and that at specified rates of charge; such rates being so arranged as to remunerate the lessees and afford them a moderate profit—say 25 per cent. on the bare additional cost of the service.

“As regards lines remaining in the hands of the present companies, it appears advisable that whenever railway companies come before Parliament for fresh powers, advantage be taken of the opportunity thus offered, by requiring the companies to perform the postal service at specified rates regulated on fixed principles, and providing for all ordinary contingencies; any existing contracts which may have a fixed term to run being allowed to continue in force until they shall be terminated in the ordinary course, under the conditions for that purpose provided in each contract. The rates should be considerably higher than those recommended for insertion in the leases.

“As regards the use of such trains as may be run by the companies for their own purposes, I concur with Mr. Page and Mr. Gregory in opinion, that the rate of charge to the Post Office should be based upon the rate of charge which the companies make to the public for similar services; due allowance being made to the Post Office for the extent and regularity of its custom, and for its performing the duties of collection and delivery.

“As regards trains specially ordered and controlled by the Post Office, I am of opinion, that excepting a few very peculiar cases, the payment for the service should also be according to a fixed scale; and this I think should be so regulated, as at once to cover the additional expense to which the company may be put by the Post Office requirement (after fair deductions for any use of the train made by the Company itself), and to yield on the sums thus ascertained the ordinary 100 per cent. required for interest of capital, &c., and profit.

“This, I propose, not as a perfect plan, but as more convenient, and even more equitable, than the plan now in use.

“The following tariff is based on the above principle, and is accordingly recommended for adoption, as regards railways not belonging to the State.

“Tariff of rates to be paid for the conveyance of mails by trains under fixed notice:

“First. Trains exclusively employed by the Post Office.

On the Narrow Gauge. Per Mile. On the Broad Gauge. Per Mile.

“For a train (consisting of an engine and the usual break van) and one separate carriage for the mails

2s.

4d.

2s.

6d.

“For every additional separate carriage (the number and distance to be run by each being varied from time to time according to the exigencies of the service), an additional rate of

0s.

3d.

0s.

4½d.

“In cases where the distance between the stations—between which the mail train is required by the Post Office to run—is less than fifty miles, the distance to be paid for shall be increased by one-fourth part of the difference between the actual distance and fifty miles.

“In all cases where a mail train is required to run in only one direction, the mileage to be paid for shall be assumed to be greater by 50 per cent. than the distance actually ordered to be run; and, again, where the distance so augmented shall still be less than fifty miles, the payment shall be further increased in accordance with the rule laid down in the preceding paragraph.

“When mail trains are run during the night (i.e., between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.), an addition shall be made to the mileage charge payable by the Post Office for the distance actually required to be run, such addition being determined by dividing the sum of 6d. among all the trains run in the night, whether Post Office trains or not.

“Second. Trains not exclusively employed by the Post Office.

“From the rate which would be chargeable against the Post Office if the train consisted only of the carriage or carriages required by the Post Office as above, a deduction to be made for every carriage of whatever description ran in the train for other than Post Office purposes (the company having a right, as above, of varying the number of such carriages), at the rate of 4d. per mile on the narrow gauge, and 6d. per mile on the broad gauge; provided, however, that the rate remaining to be paid by the Post Office shall in no case be less than the rate which would be payable for the use of an ordinary train under the tariff hereinafter prescribed.

“That in the event of any company satisfying the Board of Trade, or other Government Board yet to be appointed (as suggested in this report), that owing to circumstances not herein provided for, it has a claim to additional payment, the same shall be made.

“Tariff of rates for the conveyance of mails by ordinary trains:

“First. Where the Post Office requires a prescribed amount of space, and employs its own guard to exchange bags, &c.

On the Narrow Gauge. Per Mile. On the Broad Gauge. Per Mile.

“For the exclusive use of one compartment of a carriage, second or any inferior class, at the option of the Post Office

2d.

2d.

“For ditto of two compartments

4d.

4d.

“For ditto of three compartments

6d.

6d.

“For ditto of four compartments

—

8d.

“For whole carriage

8d.

10d.

“And for any additional carriage or portion of a carriage, at the same rates.

“Second. When the Post Office does not require a prescribed amount of space and the mails are exchanged by the train guard.

“For every 112 lbs. ordinary maximum aggregate weight of mails½d. per mile; any portion of 112 lbs. being considered as 112 lbs.

“In the event of the Post Office requiring a carriage or carriages exceeding the ordinary dimensions (by which term “ordinary dimensions” is meant carriages whose interior horizontal sectional area does not exceed, in the case of the narrow gauge, 150 square feet, and in the ease of the broad gauge 225 square feet), the Company shall have a right to call upon the Board of Trade to increase the charge for such carriage or carriages by an addition to the tariff rates proportionate to the increased size of the carriage or carriages; and on the other hand, should the Company, for its own purpose, run one or more carriages exceeding the ordinary dimensions, as above, in any mail train, not devoted exclusively to the Post Office, then the Post Office shall have a right to call upon the Board of Trade to determine in like manner the increased amount of deduction in respect to such larger carriages.

“The compensation for insufficient notice of the abandonment by the Post Office of a mail train under notice, shall be one-fourth part of the full payment for the difference between the actual notice and the required notice of six months.

“The other difficulties pointed out in Mr. E. J. Page’s evidence, seem to indicate that the law with respect to the mail service on railways also requires alteration or extension in the following particulars, viz.:—

“First. The Post Office should have the power of requiring railway companies, by legal notice, when necessary, to run mails to be employed exclusively in the conveyance of mails and officers of the Post Office.

“Second. The right of a mail guard or other Post Office servant, when travelling and paying his fare as a passenger, to exchange bags at intermediate stations without additional charge, provided the aggregate weight of mail does not at any time exceed that allowed to a passenger of the same class, should be made clear.

“Third. The right of the Post Office to require for a mail guard or other Post Office servant, a monthly, quarterly, or annual or other periodical ticket, at the same charge as is made to the public for the same distance and for the same period, should be made clear.

“Fourth. The mode of calculating the rate of travelling of a mail train, making allowance for the difference between the stops of the company’s fastest train, and those of the mail train required by the Post Office, should be clearly defined.

“Fifth. The right of the Post Office to insist upon the erection and use of the mail-bag exchanging apparatus at the cost of the department, should be made clear.

“In another portion of his evidence, Mr. Edward J. Page dwells on the practicability and importance of establishing a small parcel post at an uniform rate of charge: pointing out, at the same time, the peculiar facilities and advantages for this purpose, which are afforded by the organisation and machinery of the Post Office; so superior in their operation and extent to any possessed by railway companies.

“It appears highly desirable that, as fast as railways become national property, provision should be made in the leases for giving effect to these views; and in the meantime, fully believing that the plan would prove beneficial to railway interests as well as to the public, it is hoped that arrangements for the purpose may be made (as suggested by Mr. Edward Page), for attaining the same end, with the concurrence of existing companies.”

The recommendations of Sir Rowland Hill, as regards the Post Office and the railways, although drawn up with such elaborate and dogmatic precision, have not the slightest chance of ever being adopted; but as it is so unceasingly asserted and repeated, on Post Office authority, that railways are more costly to the department than the old road conveyances, and that it is a great hardship on the Post Office that it cannot get mails conveyed by ordinary trains, except at unreasonable rates, it is desirable to make an addition to what has been said in previous pages, on both these questions.

We must ask permission to go as far back as the year 1838. In that year, as we learn by a return laid before the Committee of the House of Commons which sat on Postal Reform, and which was presided over by the late Mr. Robert Wallis, M.P. for Glasgow, that the daily mileage of mail coaches in 1838 was 24,613, and the payments for this mileage were £84,103, being an average of 2¼d. per single mile. And we learn also, by an article that appeared in Fraser’s Magazine of September, 1862, written, as we understand, by Mr. M. D. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, from information evidently supplied from official sources, that the weight of the letters carried throughout the kingdom in 1838, was 750 tons. We find likewise, by returns furnished to Mr. Wallis’s Committee, that letters formed 7 per cent. of the total weight of mails, consequently the weight of mails for the whole year 1838, was 10,500 tons. The latest dated Postmaster-General’s Report, which contains details of postal mileage is that of the 30th of April, 1863. It specifies that the mails travelled daily 49,782 miles by railway in 1862, at an average charge for the whole kingdom of 6¾d. per mile. In the same year “mails were conveyed by mail coaches, omnibuses, mail carts, &c., exclusive of conveyance of mail bags from one part of a town to another,” 33,371 miles each day, at an average cost of 2½d. a mile.

In 1866, the railway postal mileage, according to the evidence and statements furnished to the Royal Commissioners on Railways, was 60,000 miles a day, or, with deductions for greatly diminished mileage on Sundays, Good Friday, and Christmas Day, about 18,780,000 miles per annum. The total amounts paid to railway companies by the Post Office was £570,502, or about 7½d. per single mile. The total weight of mails carried by railways is certainly not less than 110,000 tons, so that, whilst the payments to railway companies in 1866 were about seven times as much as they were to mail coaches in 1838, the weight of mails carried is nearly ten and a-half times as great. But the rate of speed has been quadrupled in the course of a few years. In the olden time, increase of speed of even half a mile an hour, always added considerably to mileage cost, but by railways, the old ten miles an hour are converted into forty, with much diminished cost,—weight for weight carried.

And, again, as regards the constantly reiterated Post Office grievance, that it is impossible to despatch mails by ordinary trains, except at a higher rate than is charged for the conveyance of ordinary parcels of similar weights, and that the department is in consequence deprived of the opportunity of sending mails as frequently as they otherwise would despatch them. This however, as has already been shown, is a grievance, almost imaginary, inasmuch as successive Postmaster-General’s Reports show (see ante page 106) that contracts have been entered into with almost every railway company—beyond all doubt with all the leading companies—by which the right of sending mails by any train, whether passenger or goods, it may choose to select from, has been acquired by the Post Office. In fact, out of 12,000 miles of railway which the department sends mails over, it has, as we believe, this right or privilege over 11,000 of them. But all doubt on the matter can be removed by a return on the subject being laid before either House during the next session of Parliament.

But even supposing the Post Office had not the power it in reality possesses, of sending mail bags by whatever trains it pleases, let us consider for a moment upon what ground either of right or of equity, the department can claim the privilege of sending its mail bags at the same rates as the general public pays for its parcels, for the same distances. This question must be dealt with in two portions: transmission of mail bags with a Post Office mail guard, and transmission in charge of the guard of the railway. As regards the first. Why, in the first place, is the Post Office to have the privilege of sending a passenger in the shako and red coat of a mail guard, at a second-class fare, who is to have, free, the usual amount of luggage (not personal luggage, be it remembered) allowed to a passenger? This luggage, let it also be remembered, the mail guard is to have the right of taking along with himself into the compartment in which he is to travel, instead of its being deposited in the luggage van. There would, probably, not be any objection offered to this arrangement if the guard were to remain quietly and peaceably in the compartment with his luggage beside him, until the end of his journey. But this is not what is required or expected. As the train stops at each station, the guard is to get out of his compartment and then to hand certain portions of his mail bags to another servant of the Post Office who is on the platform waiting the arrival of the train. This person is to receive the bags handed to him by the mail guard, and this latter is to receive fresh mail bags, and then to return to his compartment. The same process is to be repeated on the platform of every station at which the train may stop, and during the running of the train between station and station, the mail bags are to be continuously sorted and arranged, so as to ensure correct delivery throughout the entire journey. It is not the space of one second class passenger, but that of eight or ten, that would be required. Yet it is persistently contended that the proper remuneration for this service, conveyance, business, or whatever may be its appropriate name, is to be the single fare of a second class passenger—and no doubt, if the mail guard could travel within the limits of a return ticket, his employers would consider that that is the amount he should pay for the double journey—not a farthing beyond it.

But if the services of the mail guard are to be dispensed with, and the duties just described are to be performed by a Company’s guard, the Post Office considers that the ordinary parcels rate from end to end is what should be paid—nothing for intermediate changes and shiftings, for the coming in of new mail bags and the going out of old ones. Yet the Post Office itself considers that all these parcels are entitled to special attention and consideration, for before a railway servant is entrusted with the charge of them he takes an oath or makes a declaration—the same, we believe, as is taken by Post Office mail guards; and in order that they may be considered Post Office servants pro hac vice, they receive, if we recollect rightly, a gratuity of a few shillings per annum. If this be not so, it does not, in reality, affect the man’s responsibility: it is the oath or declaration that binds, not the gratuity.

It is impossible for any reasonable, unblassed, or practical man of business to assert that the railway companies would not be entitled to a somewhat higher rate of remuneration than second class fare, if bags are in charge of a mail guard, or that the rate for one from end-to-end parcel, is the proper figure for mail bags placed in charge of a Company’s servant, to be worked by him as if he were a mail guard.

One more point on the subject of postal conveyance by railway. It shall be the last.

The Post Office discharges three functions in connection with letters and other postal documents. They are, collection, transmission, and delivery. The first and last are performed by Post Office servants; transmission, except for certain portions of foot rural transport, is invariably by contract. It is transmission alone that makes a letter of value as a means of intercommunication between persons residing, or situated, more or less distantly from one another. If, as traders, we purchased a ton of letter paper, its price would probably be about £62, or say 7d. a pound; and supposing it came some 80 to 100 miles, its cost would be increased by another twenty shillings, a sixty-second of the first cost of the article. Convert this pound, or this ton of paper into a ton of written letters, and, if we take each chargeable letter at a third of an ounce (the Post Office considers each to weigh a little more than a quarter of an ounce, but for the purposes of this calculation they are taken at the higher figure), a pound of letters, with a postage[51] stamp on each letter, becomes worth four shillings to the Post Office, instead of sevenpence as a pound of paper; and, by the same process, a ton becomes changed from £63 to £448.

The total cost of the Post Office service for 1865 was £2,941,086; the net revenue, £1,482,522, a little over 50 per cent.; consequently, a ton of letters, by no act of the Post Office, except by its monopoly, which recent criminal proceedings show that it is determined to interpret rigidly, is worth £225 net to it. According to the ideas of Messrs. Hill (2), Page, and Gregory, the railway should carry the ton of paper, converted into letters, at a high rate of speed, and with numerous conditions of a penal character, at the same scale of payment, or, if possible, at a lower, than the price which was charged for the original ton of paper sent by ordinary goods train, at slow speed, and without any special conditions attached to its conveyance.

The railway companies are willing to carry letters and other postal matter at a rate not bearing any proportion or ratio whatever to the profit which the monopoly gets the benefit of by their conveyance, but at a fair and equitable scale of remuneration, which scale shall be decided, in case of difference, by two impartial men (Mr. Gregory, do you come quite within that definition?), and if they disagree, by an umpire who, at all events, is expected to be impartial.

But, before we conclude, we must again ask on what grounds, other than the hollow ones of pretence, can the Post Office claim special exemptions, as regards payments, as well as special rights and privileges, without adequate remuneration for them? Neither the Post Office nor any other department of the State assisted railways during their inception, or during their construction; on the contrary, whenever they had the chance of raising their hands against or making exorbitant demands upon railways, they never failed to do so. Innumerable instances in proof could be cited, but one only must suffice “in this connection,” as our American cousins would say. When, in 1855, the Bill for the improved “passenger and postal communication between London and Dublin,” was in progress through the House of Commons, the late Mr. Wilson, then Secretary of the Treasury, gave notice of the introduction of clauses to exempt the Post Office from payment for this improved service. It was only on the strongly expressed determination of the promoters of the Bill, that if these clauses were persevered in, it would be withdrawn, that they were abandoned. Mr. Wilson excused himself—for he felt excuse was necessary—on the plea that he was forced to give notice of their proposed introduction, at the instance of the Post Office, and that he remonstrated, in vain, against them.

It is quite right, it is absolutely necessary in the interests of the community at large, that, inasmuch as railways are the public highways of the land, the right of postal transmission upon them shall be secured in the most complete, prompt, and absolute manner that law can enforce. There must be no doubt or hesitation upon this point; but that limit passed, the postal department is, notwithstanding that its officials are of “Her Majesty’s service,” nothing more than, as a whole, an extremely well-organised, efficient trading establishment, protected, as a monopoly, by many Acts of Parliament. The railways have never shown themselves otherwise than ready, it might rather be said anxious, to serve the Post Office; but in this land of trade and commerce, their managers look for proper remuneration for services rendered. No more is asked, and no more is expected. The law and practice have very wisely instituted a distinction between the manner in which ocean and railway mail contracts shall be entered into. Because the ocean highway is open to all, tenders for conveyance upon it are invited from all; on the other hand, with railways it has been very properly decided that they shall convey the mails, whether they like to do so or not; but the same law that has enacted this compulsion, has also prescribed the manner by which a just and reasonable remuneration shall, in case of difference, be obtained. Others than the lawfully-constituted monopolists of St. Martin’s-le-Grand would long since have been satisfied. Unhappily, however, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megæra[52] have lashed them into furor. Cannot the crème? de la crème of the gods, the uppermost crust of society in Cælestia, invent or discover a Townsend’s Sarsaparilla to purify their bloods; a Soothing Syrup—a Dalby’s Carminative—a Balm of Gilead that can assuage their anguish? Or, if the gods fail, might not a dose or two of Holloway’s Ointment, taken internally, be tried? In former days, the Earl of Aldborough, then in the flesh, but now, alas, only of “glorious, pious,” and pillular memory, was wont to testify of it, as a wonderful remedy in the cure of ulcers.