The Evening Star MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1875.

Evening Star, Issue 3839, 14 June 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, JUNE 14, 1875.

If experience be the best teacher, politicians are the slowest of scholars. Perhaps to this it may be owing that history is sajd to repeat itself. Thirty-five years ago England was busy initiating its railway system, and the Legislature undertook to decide upon the merits of competing lines. .Regardless of the evils that were induced by this course of action, the Provincial Council has, this session, followed the pernicious example. This is the more inexcusable, as the circumstances under which this meddlesomeness has been adopted are so widely different. In. England everything was tentative. The value of railways as a manna 0 f internal communication was merely theoretical. In one or two instances in which they had been tried under favorable circumatances, they had proved advantageous to the towns and districts iu vfhich their termini were situated, but their indirect benefits were undeveloped, and a large and influential section of the population regarded the system not merely with suspicion, but with positive enmity. These, mainly the landlord class, with strange shortsightedness, persuaded themselves that the improved mode of transit would prove ruinous to their estates. They held the reins of government in their own hands, and under the pretence o! watching over the public interest, they required every railway project to be submitted to vexatious and expensive parliamentary investigation, and prescribed conditions and terms of compensation to landlords for imaginary damage to their estates, which in the end added as much to the cost of railway construction as would have sufficed to have formed a line round Great Britain. Nor was this the least evil. Uncertainty as to the fate of every application made for permission to construct a railway, induced competition. No sooner was one project started than two or more rival lines were proposed. A gambling spirit was introduced into railway construction which, instead of being checked, was fostered by the parliamentary ordeal through which each proposed line had to pass; and the result was a reckless “getting up ” of companies, the claims of which to parliamentary favor were based on the hollowest and flimsiest grounds, on the most unreliable calculations of traffic returns, and the merest sham of survey. Very little reflection would have served to show that no Committee of the House of Commons, still less that most august House as a whole, was competent to prouounoe a correct judgment as to the value of the evidence tendered. Men of fair reputation were readily found who, according to the side which paid them, gave most conflicting evidence. Theories of railway construction were laid down as rules for decision whioh have proved to be fallacious ; and many a company unexpectedly found .itself successful, the projectors of which never expected, and ill some instances never intended to carry out their projects Times have changed, and th« value of railways is so well known and

acknowledged that landowners, instead of opposing their construction, are willing to bear the cost of it themselves ; but politioians have not changed. They still assume to be able, after a few hour’s talk, to decide upon a question that no expert would pronounce Judgment upon without careful investigation and mature consideration; and they give their “aye" or “no," biased more by political and party motives than by knowledge of the subject on which they vote. It seems very reasonable that men of property willing to undertake railwav construction should be allowed to do so ; but since railways, even through their estates are not altogether private property, but partake ofjthe nature of public roads, the public have a right to a voice in the matter, and may fairly say, “ Make a road, but let it be as widely useful as possible ; you are not the only people interested.” Two courses, it has reasonably been said, were open to the British Legislature, had they been sincerely desirous of changing the machinery of internal traffic at the smallest cost to the country. One was to sanction the formation of every line projected, on conditions fair both to the com-' pany and the public; the other, and pethaps preferable one, was, when a line Was proposed, to have ascertained the best by accurate survey charging the company ; with the cost, but deciding that no other k° would.besanctioned, it. is not pro- : bable that the plan would fall through. By the last means only, in our opinion, can the moat extended utility at the least cost be secured. .