A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

In the same Session (1836) the Duke of Wellington moved, and carried, in the House of Lords a general clause, to be inserted in all railway Acts, the effect of which would have been to give to Parliament the power of dealing as it might think fit with any railway company during the next year. John Herapath thereupon inserted in the current issue of his "Railway Magazine" a letter addressed to the Duke of Wellington, in the course of which he said:—

"No person can doubt your Grace's intentions are honourable to all parties. Fearful of the consequences of overgrown monopolies, you are anxious to put some salutary restrictions to those bodies riding, as you apprehend, rough-shod over the public; and you are anxious to do this before they become too powerful to be ruled. Every honest and right-minded man must be satisfied that such are needful; nor is there a company got up on honourable principles that would object to any reasonable measure, in which a due regard is paid to their own interests, and a proper consideration is had to all the circumstances of their situation and risk. But in common fairness these must be taken into account."

Defending the railways, and keenly criticising the attitude of the State towards them, Herapath further said:—

"No man knows better than yourself that these works, if they are at all likely to be beneficial to the nation—which everyone in his sober senses admits—will form a great and brilliant era in its prosperity. Nay, my Lord Duke, permit me to ask you if they have not been a Godsend towards the preservation of this country, by giving a new impetus to industry and trade, and saving us from that anarchy and confusion to which distress was fast hurrying a large proportion of our population? With all these advantages staring us in the face, what have the Government done to promote railways? Have they done a single thing? I am not conscious of one. Have they removed a single impediment? Not to my knowledge; but they have raised several. Have they contributed a single farthing? Rather, I believe, by the intolerable and vexatious oppositions permitted in passing the bills, have been the cause of spending many hundred thousands, which, like another national debt, will prey to the end of time on the vitals of public industry."

The Duke's proposed clause was dropped, and was heard of no more; but Herapath's prediction as to the equivalent of "another national debt" being imposed on public industry was to be verified by the course of subsequent events still more than by any avoidable expenditure then already incurred.

If, again, as Herapath said, the Government had done nothing to promote railways, they had not been backward in seeking advantage from them in the interests both of the Exchequer and of the Post Office.

Within two years of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, a tax of one-eighth of a penny per mile for every passenger conveyed on the railway was imposed, and the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester, then struggling into existence, announced that, in consequence of the tax, they would be obliged to charge the public higher fares. By 1840 the Exchequer receipts from the tax amounted to £112,000. Two years later, following on a great public agitation, Peel substituted for the mileage tax a tax of five per cent on receipts from passenger traffic, and in 1844 the tax (which had been especially oppressive on the poorer class of travellers) was abolished in the case of third-class passengers carried at fares not exceeding a penny a mile in "Parliamentary trains," stopping at every station.[^[42]]

The local authorities, with Parliamentary sanction, also subjected the railways to a degree of taxation against which Mr G. C. Glynn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Railway, in a speech (at a meeting of his company) quoted by Francis, protested in the following terms: "Then comes the last item of local taxes and parochial rates; these, gentlemen, we do take exception to.... The county assessors and the parties to whom appeal from them is made seem actuated by one principle, namely, to extract every farthing they can from the railway property. We ask no boon, we ask for no favour from Government on this subject; but we do ask for justice."

The railways had to submit to the taxation, but they won the day as against certain excessive and, as they considered, intolerable demands made upon them by or on behalf of the Post Office.

In 1838, based on the recommendations of a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the transmission of mails by railway, the Government introduced a Bill which, in effect, placed the entire railway system of the country, then and for all future time, at the command and under the supreme control of the Postmaster-General. That functionary was empowered by the Bill to call upon the railway companies to provide him with—at their own cost—special or ordinary trains for carrying the mails at any hour of the day or night, proceeding at such speed, and calling or not calling at such places, as he might direct, the companies giving security to the Queen by bond for duly complying with all Post Office orders, and being made liable to a penalty of £20 in respect to every railway officer, servant or agent, who might disobey any Post Office order. If the Post Office wished to use its own engines and conveyances it was to be at liberty to do so without paying any rates or tolls whatever; and it was, also, to be free to clear away any obstructions to its engines, and use any of the railway company's appliances it wanted. The railway companies were, in return, to be assured a "fair remuneration" for (in effect) the wear and tear of the rails; but, lest this payment might be too much for the Post Office, the Postmaster-General was further authorised to recoup himself by carrying, not simply the mails, but passengers, in the trains he might think fit to command or to run, thus competing on the railway lines with the companies whose property he was virtually to annex.