"The mode by which the opposition of landholders was met bears the same sad character as with other railways. Every passenger who goes by the Great Western pays an additional fare to meet the interest on this most unjust charge; and every shareholder in this, as in other lines, receives a less dividend than he is entitled to from the same cause. Nor does the blame rest with the conductors of the railway. They were the agents of the shareholders and were bound to forward their interests. The principle of the case to them was nothing. They were bound to get the Act at the cheapest possible rate, and if the law gave their rich opponents the power of practically stopping the progress of the line, and those opponents chose to avail themselves of the law, the shame rests with the proprietor of the soil, and not with the promoter of the railway. Fancy prices were given for fancy prospects, in proportion to the power of the landowner. Noblemen were persuaded to allow their castles to be desecrated for a consideration. There can be no doubt—it was, indeed, all but demonstrated—that offers were made to and accepted by influential parties to withdraw their opposition to a Bill which they had declared would ruin them, while the smaller and more numerous complainants were paid such prices as should actually buy off a series of long and tedious litigants."
The promoters of that most unfortunate of lines, the Eastern Counties—predecessor of the Great Eastern Railway of to-day—found themselves faced with serious opposition in the Lords after they had got their Bill through the Commons; "but," says the first report, "the directors, by meeting the parties with the same promptness and in the same fair spirit which had carried them successfully through their previous negotiations, effected amicable arrangements with them," and the company was incorporated in 1836. The negotiations must, however, have been carried through with greater promptness than discretion, for, to save the fate of their Bill, the directors undertook to pay one influential landowner £120,000 for some purely agricultural land which was said to be then worth not more than £5000. After they had secured their Bill they made persistent attempts to get out of paying the £120,000; and, altogether, they so shocked John Herapath that in successive monthly issues of his "Railway Magazine" all references to the Eastern Counties Railway Company were encircled by a black border.
In another instance a company proposed to meet the opposition of certain landowners by carrying the line through a tunnel, which would enable them to avoid the property in question. The tunnel would have cost £50,000, and the landowners said, "Give us the price of that tunnel and we will withdraw our opposition." The company offered £30,000, and the landowners agreed to be "conciliated" on this basis. They still came off better than the objector who began by demanding £8000 and finally accepted £80. John Francis, too, relates the following story: "The estate of a nobleman was near a proposed line. He was proud of his park and great was his resentment. In vain was it proved that the new road would not come within six miles of his house, that the highway lay between, that a tunnel would hide the inelegance. He resisted all overture on the plea of his feelings, until £30,000 was offered. The route was, however, afterwards changed. A new line was marked out which would not even approach his domain; and, enraged at the prospect of losing the £30,000, he resisted it as strenuously as the other."
There were some honourable exceptions to the general tendency to extort as much as possible from the railway companies. Among these may be mentioned the voluntary return by the Duke of Bedford of a sum of £150,000 paid to him as compensation, his Grace explaining that the railway had benefitted instead of injuring his property; and by Lord Taunton of £15,000 out of £35,000 because his property had not suffered so much as had been anticipated. Exceptions such as these do not, however, alter the fact that, as stated by Francis in 1851, the London and Birmingham Company had had to pay for land and compensation an average of £6300 per mile, the Great Western £6696, the London and South Western £4000 and the Brighton Company £8000 per mile.
One argument, at least, which can be advanced in favour of State railways—as applying, however, to a country beginning the creation of a railway system, or building new railways, rather than to one taking over an existing system—is that extortions in respect to land could not be practised on the State in the same way as they have been practised on English railway companies left by their Government to make the best terms they could with those who were in a position to drive the hardest of bargains with them. In Prussia, for example, the securing of land for any new lines wanted for the State railway system is a comparatively simple matter. If the landowner and the responsible officials cannot agree to terms, the matter is referred to arbitration, though with every probability that the landowner will get no more than a fair sum, and will not be able to extort fancy figures under the head of consequential damages or as the "price" of his withdrawing any opposition he might otherwise offer.
Apart from other considerations, and taking only the one item of land, the State lines of Continental countries may well have cost less to construct than the English lines, while both in the United States and in Canada the pioneer railway companies had great stretches of land given to them, by State or Federal Government, not alone for their lines, but as a further means of assisting them financially.
When one finds how the cost of creating the railway system in our own country was swollen, under the conditions here stated, to far greater proportions than should have been the case, and when one remembers that the excessive capital expenditure involved in meeting extortionate demands had either to remain unremunerative or be made good out of the payments of travellers and traders, it is evident that comparisons between English and foreign railway rates and fares may be carried to unreasonable lengths if they ignore conditions of origin by which the operation of the lines concerned must necessarily have been more or less influenced. Francis himself says on this point, while confessing that "every line in England has cost more than it ought":—
"The reader may learn to moderate his intense indignation when, anathematising railways, he remembers with what unjust demands and impure claims they had to deal, and with what sad and selfish treatment it was their lot to meet. They owe nothing to the country; they owe nothing to the aristocracy. They were wronged by the former; they were contumaciously treated by the latter."
Another factor, apart from cost of land, in swelling the construction capital of British railways to abnormal proportions has been the cost of Parliamentary proceedings; and here, again, State railways have had the advantage. In Prussia the obtaining of sanction for the building of an additional line by the State railways administration is little more than a matter of official routine; whereas in England the expenses incurred by railway companies in obtaining their Acts have often amounted to a prodigious sum—to be added, of course, to the capital outlay which the users of the railway will be expected to recoup, or, at least, to pay interest on.
An especially striking example was that of the Blackwall Railway, now leased to the Great Eastern Railway Company. The cost of obtaining the Act for this line, which is only five miles and a quarter in length, worked out at no less a sum than £14,414 per mile, the total cost being thus £75,673. The amounts paid by certain other companies in securing their Parliamentary powers are given as follows by G. R. Porter in his "Progress of the Nation" (1846):—