Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

We are told, indeed, in the Post Office Report, that the railways have no right to be treated on such principles. On the contrary, they are threatened. “The law officers of the Crown,” says that document, “have given an opinion that Government can claim exemption from toll on railways.” Happily, it is one thing for “the law officers of the Crown to give an opinion,” and another for a Government department to succeed in enforcing it.

But who are these, asks the Report, who complain of “illiberal treatment?” The old mail coaches, it says, represented free trade and competition; but these railways are “large monopolies in the hands of a few private companies.” A few private companies! What is meant by a “private company”? The railway share and debenture holders of England number more than a quarter of a million. Do these capitalists represent a “private company”? An old mail coach, carrying four insides and three out, and horsed by Mr. Fagg at 2½d. a mile, is called in this Report a public conveyance, “by which the Post Office was protected from undue demands, in the transmission of its mails along the public highways of the United Kingdom,” whilst a railway, like the London and North-Western, with nearly eighteen thousand shareholders and a capital exceeding thirty millions, is called “a monopoly in the hands of a private company.” A monopoly! Allow me to ask, again, of what has any railway got a monopoly? The old “public highways,” as the Report calls them, are still open to everybody. The Post Office authorities may put upon them, once more, if they think fit, their favourite public conveyances. Except the bulk of their bags, there is nothing to prevent them from loading them once more in the court-yard of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and starting them off for Holyhead, or Aberdeen, with the old guard on his seat behind, and the old driver flourishing his whip.

The railways have no monopoly; Parliament has never allowed them a monopoly. In France, and elsewhere, the Legislative bodies have given railway companies a monopoly for a certain number of years; but with us the practice of Parliament has been precisely the reverse. So far from exercising any monopoly, the railways here are subjected, even among themselves, to a fierce competition. Parliament has sanctioned a second railway to Dover; there are already two lines to Hastings; two are completed to Portsmouth, and a third is making; the Government has insisted upon the South-Western making a second line to Exeter; there are already three lines to Birmingham; there are three lines to Derby, three to Peterborough, three to York, two to Cambridge, two to Oxford, two to Norwich, two to Lincoln, two to Liverpool; I know not how many to Shrewsbury; and many routes to Scotland both by the west coast and the east. Monopoly! Why Parliament on the whole circuit of the country has established, not only the principle, but the practice of free competition; and we have absolutely as much competition amongst railways now as ever existed in the old days of, what the Post Office Report calls, the public highways.

The only monopoly ever accorded by Parliament to the railway companies has been the right of taking land; but that right has been encumbered, both legally and by the opportunity afforded for making claims for exorbitant compensations. Parliament has subjected railway companies to frightful expenses, and to most uncertain and unfair tribunals in its own committees. It has never assisted any work in progress, however useful even for purposes of State. It has given no concession to any company; it has undertaken no share of the work, as has been done by the Governments of other States; it has granted no crown lands for any line; it has not assisted to make a line; it has guaranteed no interest upon outlay; it has not even lent money (with the exception of about two millions to Irish railways), as it did year after year to the Holyhead Road Commissioners. What, then, is the Government entitled to from the railway companies? No doubt it is entitled to have public services properly performed, at a moderate cost. And all public services are performed by the railways for the Government, at a moderate cost. But it is not entitled—it can establish no claim—to use the property of railway proprietors, without toll, or to have its work done, without paying a fair rate of profit to those who perform it. When the Post Office Report tells you, that railways are monopolies which have destroyed competition, I ask you to consider, on the other hand, whether railways are not in fact too much subject, at the present time, to Government control. This very mail service is performed by the railways under compulsion. Did the Government compel any one to perform the duty of carrying the mails in the days of the old mail coaches? If, in those days, they had advertised for tenders from stage coach proprietors, for the performance of a duty such as they now exact from railway companies, subject to arbitration as to the sum that should be paid for its performance, how many tenders is it likely they would have obtained?

On the other hand, I ask you to look at the treatment the railways are receiving from the Government. I will take the case of their own selection—the case of the Chester and Holyhead Railway—in which they make a merit of paying at least double what would have been awarded by arbitrators. Look at the route to Ireland before the Holyhead Railway was constructed. No less than thirty-six hours were occupied in getting from London to Dublin. But this was regarded as great expedition, and it was most munificently paid for by the Government. They spent, as I have told you, nearly a million of money in making the road. They lost on the Irish steamers more than £100,000 a-year, to say nothing of their contract for the coach, and upwards of £3,000 a-year remitted on the tolls. This was the state of things before railways were established. The work is now done, not in thirty-six, but in fifteen hours.[157] The whole mail service now, with this increased expedition, costs the Government no more than £65,000 a-year.[158] Thus the Government save, upon this route alone, twenty-one hours in every journey, and nearly £40,000 a-year in expenditure.

But in the face of this, what has been the conduct of the Government to the Chester and Holyhead Railway Company? In the first place, it imposed conditions which greatly enhanced the cost of the Britannia Bridge. Then observe how it treated that line with reference to other matters. The Holyhead road runs for about half-a-mile near Conway upon an embankment constructed on the sea-shore. The Holyhead Company proposed to form its railway outside that embankment, thereby, in fact, widening the embankment and affording it protection from the sea. The same state of things occurred in the Isle of Anglesea, at an inlet known as the Stanley Sands. In both cases the railway rested on the slope of the Government embankment, and for this “privilege,” as it is called, the Government to this day charges the railway an annual rental!

Such is one illustration (among many) of the treatment of the railway companies by the Government departments. They have aggravated the expenses and difficulties of a line which has helped to save them, as I said before, twenty-one hours in every journey between London and Dublin, and no less than £40,000 a year in money outlay. At the present time, the Post Office Report tells us, that the department is paying double what it ought for conveying the mails over this railway, and that “the law officers of the Crown have given an opinion,” that Government can claim the right to pass over it, in common with all others, without paying any toll at all!

In conclusion, I ask, how can the Post Office authorities justify their tone respecting the railways? They admit great advantages from railways, but they say that against those advantages there is an important set-off in increased expense. Is there any foundation for this charge? Let us look at the figures. The mails are now conveyed daily by rail and coach over, in round figures, 60,000 miles. The total cost of this conveyance is stated at £443,000. Upwards of £100,000 is saved upon the sea service with Ireland and the continent alone. Now, suppose the mail service of the country was still performed under the old mail coach system, what would it have cost? The net payment to mails, upon their own showing, would have amounted to £310,000; the tolls and coaches, at 5d. per mile, would have been £456,000. Add to this the steam-boat saving, and we should have a total cost exceeding £800,000 per annum. But as the present cost is only £443,000, there is a difference in favour of the railway system exceeding £400,000 a year, without taking credit for the increased rapidity of transmission.

If I turn to the Post Office accounts, at page 57 of the Report, I find that the additional work, to the extent of five and a-half times, has been performed at an increased cost of only two and a-half times. By their own showing then, the cost of conveyance has not “increased in a far greater degree,” but in a far less degree in proportion to the work performed. I find, also, that the cost of conveying the mails has only increased, in a corresponding ratio, with the increase in the expenses of all the other branches of Post Office expenditure since 1838. I find still further, that the whole cost of conveyance amounts to little more than one-fourth of the whole cost of management, for whilst the whole cost of management in 1855 was £1,651,000, the entire payment for cost of conveyance was only £443,000. I ask, then, with what justice, with what show of propriety, can the Postmaster-General, or his officials, complain of the payments to railways for the postal communication of the nation?

The whole course of this argument has not only confirmed my conviction that without railway facilities the plans of Mr. Rowland Hill, for the reduction of the rates of postage could not have been carried out to their full extent, but it has clearly proved to my mind, that they could not have been carried into effect at all. Space, we have seen, is absolutely essential to the accommodation of the increased bulk,—speed is absolutely essential to that multiplication of correspondence, which is requisite to sustain the rapidly increasing establishment charges, augmented already from £500,000 to £1,200,000 per annum. If the absence of facilities, both of space and speed, had not proved fatal, by preventing the development of the system, it is clear, that the expense would have broken down that system altogether. I am convinced also, that unless more and more advantage be taken of railway facilities, the postage system will not progress, in proportion to the increase of the population and wealth of the kingdom. What is it that multiplies communication? Speed and facility of transmission. In those the Electric Wire is now a competitor with the Post. Suppose we had the Electric Telegraph in operation, without a railway system, and our correspondence consequently dependent on the old mail coach, I ask what would be the effect upon the penny postage system? If the Post Office authorities desire to increase the correspondence of the nation, through their machinery, they must make more and more use of railway facilities. It is only by more frequent postal communications and accelerated speed of delivery, that the telegraph can be successfully competed with, as regards the large and increasing portion of the correspondence of the nation, which is flashing unceasingly along its wires. To obtain that increased frequency and accelerated speed, the Post Office authorities must deal equitably with the railway companies. It is not only the duty, but it is for the interest, of Government so to do. If the Government and the railway companies went hand in hand, arrangements might be made, by which the whole correspondence of the nation might be carried on, in a much more perfect manner, with advantage to the companies, and without any direct payment by the Government. When the Post Office authorities are prepared to deal with this question in an equitable spirit, I shall be prepared to show them how such an arrangement may be effected.[159] Meanwhile I leave them, in the hope that these remarks, offered in all good-will and friendliness of spirit, upon the document they have published, may have some influence, in inducing them henceforward to regulate their affairs for their own and the public interests, and to endeavour, in some degree, to keep better pace with the advancing spirit of the time.