which public management would never have | gation of the Danube. This has been inafforded. Of late there has been somewhat of a reaction; there is now a disposition to strengthen and improve Local and Municipal Institutions, and to invest them with wider functions. It seems, probable, too, that this movement will increase. But it will be long before it does for us what private enterprise has done and is doing. Whilst, however, private enterprise has done so much for us, it must be admitted that there has been little thought or foresight about the ultimate results of the huge monopolies we have been creating. The few conditions by which Parliament has sought to restrict them have been useless, and, occasionally, worse than useless. And, looking to the difficulty there will be in setting matters right in the face of this gigantic Joint-Stock Company interest, it is not surprising that the public should sometimes be tempted to be ungrateful for what it has done for us, and to look upon it as a Frankenstein which it would be well to put out of the way. These general observations will be best illustrated and supported by a glance at the history of the several undertakings to which we have referred. 1. Harbours and natural Navigations.The improvement of these were among the first of large public works. They originated before the era of joint-stock companies, and, with the exception of a few small harbours owned by large landowners, are, and always have been, in the hands of some public body, i.e., either of a Municipal Corporation, or a Public Trust, or Commission, and not of profit-making companies. An evil of considerable magnitude has arisen in cases where the public body exercising this power is no longer the representative of the trade which uses the harbour, as, for instance, where the Town of Liverpool owned the Liverpool Docks, or where, as is now the case, the magistrates of Cheshire own the wealthy navigation of the Weaver, and pay out of taxes on trade what ought to be paid by the county rates of Cheshire. In such cases the locality is too apt to tax the trade of the country for its own benefit. But even in cases such as these, the sea-greatest of free traders generally limits the growth of the evil. If taxes are too high in one port, ships can, in most cases, seek another. There is one case in which the principle of placing harbours in the hands of a public trust has been recently applied in a very remarkable way, and with great success, viz., the improvement of the important navi trusted to an International Commission representing the different maritime nations interested in the trade of the Danube, and it has carried on its work so efficiently as to develop an enormous traffic. There is the greater reason for mentioning this case at the present moment, since it affords a precedent for endeavouring to deal in a similar way with the still more important case of the Suez Canal, which is now in a very bad financial condition, and which, if it remains in the hands of a private company, is likely to suffer hereafter from all the evils of monopoly, aggravated by international jealousy. 2. Canals. These were amongst the first products of the new engineering era, and have been, and now are, almost entirely in the hands of joint-stock companies. They have, however, been generally superseded or swallowed up by railways, and are now of little importance. But for this we should probably have heard many complaints of their profits and charges. 3. Docks were also an early product of the engineering era, and, consequently, they were often made in the first instance by private capital. On a very rough estimate made from the share lists, it seems that the capital of joint-stock companies now invested in docks amounts to nearly 15 millions. From the limited area in each port available for docks, they are often, so far as the port itself is concerned, very special monopolies. But the sea, as we have said, is the greatest of free traders. The rivalry of other ports generally prevents any very bad effect from a dock monopoly, and rouses the trade of the port to put a stop to it when it becomes oppressive. Partly for this reason, and partly because it has been found that rivalry in the same port between competing dock and harbour authorities creates confusion, difficulty, quarrels, and expense, whilst harmonious arrangement is of paramount importance to trade, the tendency for the last 20 years has been to hand over the management and construction of docks to local trusts representing the whole interests of the port and making no profit. Thus docks made by private companies at Sunderland, Liverpool, and Birkenhead, have been in late years handed over to public trusts, whilst at Newcastle and Shields, at Glasgow and Greenock, at Dundee, Leith, Belfast and Aberdeen, and other ports, docks recently made have been constructed, and are managed by public bodies representing the dock ratepayers. There are some instances in which (as was formerly the case in Liverpool, and as is now the case with the Dock Company of Hull and with the Town Council of Bristol) actual legal monopolies have been improvidently given to the owners of one set of docks, by means of charges leviable by them throughout the whole extent of the port; and the evil of such monopoly is felt, not so much in extravagant charges, as in the suppression or taxation of rival docks. In such cases the true remedy seems to be never to allow any managers of such undertakings to make charges except for the services they render, and never to allow any body to get a monopoly of the docks in any harbour unless it fairly represents all the trade of the harbour. turnpike-tolls, and to pay expenses out of rates. The importance of turnpike trusts is diminishing yearly-partly for the above reason, partly on account of the transfer of through traffic to railways. The number of turnpike trusts, according to the last published Return, was 952; their income 898,2897., and their capital debt 2,883,2801., -a mere flea-bite compared with JointStock Company capital, and annually decreasing. Under these circumstances the management of roads calls for no special regulation. Turnpike-tolls are a nuisance; but they are in a fair way to be abolished, and all the roads in the kingdom are likely soon to be in the hands of local authorities and supported by local rates. 6. Bridges and Ferries.-These form part of roads, and have been similarly dealt with, except in certain special cases, such as the bridges over the Thames, which, as we know, have been originally built by private enter 4. Lighthouses have now, for some years, been made by the Governments of all civilized countries. But in England, which was the first to build them, many of them were originally granted by the Crown to private persons with power to take tolls: and it is only since 1830 that the lighthouses so granted have been bought up and placed under public control. Even now the coasts of back-prise on the security of tolls, and which are ward Turkey are lighted by a French JointStock Company, and there are complaints of the profits it is said to be making. On the proper mode of managing lighthouses there is little to be said. It is admitted on all hands that they are necessarily a monopoly-that they must be in the hands of a central authority, and ought not to be a matter of profit to private persons. Whether they should be paid for in the shape of tolls on ships, or by the public exchequer, does not seem to be a question raising any important issue of economical principle. In both cases they are paid for more or less directly by the general consumer; in the one case, through the medium of freights-in the other, more directly by general taxation. The former plan has the practical advantage of affording a good test of the value of any proposed new works, in the willingness or unwillingness of the shipping interest, who are the immediate payers, to saddle themselves with the necessary tolls. 5. Roads. These were originally made by the local authority, i.e., by the parish. But under the demand for channels of through communication to be used by wheeled vehicles, and with the engineering improvements of the last century, the system of turnpike trusts grew up, a system under which private capital was obtained in the shape of loans secured upon tolls, and the management placed in the hands of a body of trustees, partly public, partly private. The tendency of late years has been to do away with this system-to improve Highway Boards-to place the whole of the roads under their management-to abolish now gradually being bought up by public bodies. It is not likely that many more bridges will be constructed on this principle. But if they are, it is obviously desirable that the concession should be for a limited term, and that in no case should it be accompanied, as has too often been the case, with a prohibition to set up another bridge or ferry within a certain distance, which, of course, has the effect of conferring a strict legal monopoly. 7. Railways.-These have all been made since the setting in of the engineering and joint-stock era, and are in the hands of Joint-Stock Companies. They are the great example, for good and for evil, of the jointstock system, and will probably prove its greatest difficulty. The subject of railways alone, if exhaustively treated, would far exceed the limits of an article; but there are one or two points which it is impossible to omit in dealing with the general question of industrial monopolies. The development of railway communication in Great Britain has been such as no Government management, however good, could possibly have produced. The number of lines, the number of trains, and the general comfort and convenience, are be yond those of any other country. If trunk lines had been laid out by Government, there would probably have been one main line to the North. There are now four. The capital invested amounts to 520,000,000, and the number of miles of railway constructed to upwards of 15,000. * Report by Secretary of State on Turnpike Trusts (378.) 1871. joint-arrangement, so that it is almost impracticable for travellers on one of the lines to make free use of the others. Ireland, however, is the best instance of evil arising from numerous companies, com In that country the number of original companies is 42, and of working companies 21, the mileage 2000, and the capital 26,875,0437.; so that the number of working companies as compared with capital or mileage is far greater than in England and Scotland. The average capital of lines worked by one company in the United Kingdom is upwards of a million, and of mileage 150, whilst in Ireland the same average gives 127,8007. capital and 95 miles to each working company; and it is notorious that the service is much worse than it is in England. There is no arrangement between companies whose lines form part of the same system. The larger companies fight with one another, and often oppress the smaller companies in the hopes of buying them up more cheaply. In the meantime the shareholders and the public suffer, and trade is paralysed. There are other complaints of the Irish system, but the greatest evil of all is the want of harmony, which cannot exist without monopoly. Competition has wholly failed. It is true that it has been tried in the most foolish and expensive way, through the medium of haphazard decisions of Parliamentary Committees; but it is evident that under no conditions could it have been successful or per-peting, or rather fighting, with one another. manent. The waste of money has been great; and the result is and must be monopoly. Each great Company fights off, buys up, or amalgamates with, its original rivals, till it gets a district to itself; and it then makes alliances as to rates and fares with its great neighbours so as effectually to prevent competition. There may be an occasional struggle for some special local traffic, such as the recent fight for the carriage of coals; but the public are little interested in it, for it is sure to end either in the victory of one or other Company, or in an arrangement between them, and, either way, monopoly. There may be also, when two railways run trains to the same place, a competition in the speed of trains; but this is extravagant in cost and of doubtful benefit to the public. The extent to which amalgamation, and consequently monopoly, has been carried, may be seen by a Return moved for by Mr. Cave in 1868.* From this Return it appeared that in the seven preceding years upwards of 500 Bills had been passed, containing amalgamations or working arrangeiments. In 1866, out of 13,954 miles open, belonging to 353 original Companies, 12,221 miles were worked by 28 Companies. According to the Annual Railway Return of 1870, the number of original Companies is 450, owning 15,145 miles of railway; but the number of working Companies is only 103. Nor must it be supposed that it is the interest of the public to resist monopoly. Unity of management, through booking, correspondence of trains, are so important, that the public lose more by the division of authority and responsibility than they gain by competition. In general the large Companies possessing large districts serve the public better than Companies with small and divided or straggling districts, and when large Companies interfere with one another, the result is inconvenience, and not cheapness. The writer of this article has had much experience of a great railway, which in the course of thirty or forty miles cuts three other great railways at six several points. Where they would naturally compete with one another, they have arranged the fares. But at no one of the six points at which this railroad cuts the others is there anything like through-booking, or * Parliamentary Paper, No. 242, 1868. But whilst monopoly is thus inevitable and desirable, it must not be forgotten that the interest of the Companies is to a certain extent only that of the Public. It is the interest of the Companies to develop traffic, so long as the development produces profit proportioned to the increased outlay. But it is quite possible that developments may be required which would pay their own expenses and be very useful to the public without bringing an additional penny of profit to the Shareholders. For instance, local branches may be much wanted, the traffic from which would only pay their expenses by benefiting the district, but would leave no profit to the Company. And, again, as regards fares; it is much better for the Public that a hundred passengers should be carried for sixpence than fifty for a shilling. But it is easier, cheaper, and every way better for the shareholders to carry fifty for a shilling. Again, Companies have no interest, or too often think they have none, in uniting together and developing each others' traffic. Each Company is seeking to oust, to buy up, or to amalgamate with its neighbour on the best terms for itself, and does its best to keep its traffic from going on to its neighbours' lines. On all these points the action of Railway Companies may be directly adverse to that of the Public. But no effectual attempt case of any railway constructed after the 1st of January, 1845, upon the expiration of 21 years from the passing of its private act, and in the event of its profits for three years exceeding 10 per cent., to revise the tolls. The Treasury were in like manner, after 21 years enabled to purchase the railway. But the power of revision of tolls was to be accompanied by a guarantee from the State of a constant 10 per cent. dividend; and the purchase was only to be effected at the rate of 25 years' purchase of the actual annual profits, or if they should be less than 10 per cent., at an additional price to be fixed by arbitration; and neither revision nor purchase were to be effected without a special Act of Parlia ment. has been made to foresee and provide for these cases. Still less has any attempt been made to enable the Public Exchequer to reap any ultimate benefit from the large profits which these great monopolies were expected to make, and will probably yet make. The Legislature has provided an elaborate code of laws for the protection of landowners, of road trustees, and of gas and water companies; and there are many doubtful and illogical enactments having the safety of passengers for their object. There have also been provisions of the most elaborate kind fixing the capital of the railway companies, their borrowing powers, and the financial arrangements of the shareholders inter se,-matters which really concern themselves, and not the public. These matters, according to the wiser principles of How ineffectual any such limitation of recent legislation concerning all other joint- profits would be, if exercised, we shall see stock companies, are left to the partners in the case of Gas Companies. In the case themselves, and to the operation of the or- of Railway Companies the folly or knavery dinary law of debtor and creditor, from of projectors, and the mismanagement of which railway companies have, most fool-private bills by Parliament, has hitherto ishly been excluded. prevented a 10 per cent. dividend from being reached. But precautions to secure to the public the greatest possible convenience and cheapness, or to reserve to the public the ultimate profit of these monopolies, there are practicably none. The only attempts in this direction are the following feeble and futile enactments: 1. The tolls and charges on all railways are limited by their special Acts. This limitation is really of little value, since they are almost always considerably higher than the rate which the company find it their interest to charge. Indeed, it is obvious that without power to revise the tolls periodically according to the altered circumstances of a railway, any attempt to fix them once for all by anticipation must be nugatory. As population, capital, trade, and manufactures increase, traffic increases also, and a charge which would have been moderate if levied on the small traffic which existed when the railway was made, becomes exorbitant when multiplied by the increase of developed traffic. The interest of the companies in developing traffic, although, as above noticed, it is under certain circumstances an insufficient safeguard, is yet a better safeguard than any standard of tolls and charges fixed at the time when the company commences operations. 2. In some of the earlier private bills Parliament adopted its favourite notion of limiting the profits of the company to a 10 per cent. dividend. And in 1844 an Act* was passed enabling the Treasury in the 7 & 8 Vict. c. 85. As regards the power of purchase, the conditions attached to it, viz., that the power should only apply to Companies entirely made after 1844, that the price should be determined as above mentioned, and that the purchase should only be effected by a special Act of Parliament, reduce the power to little more than a very unnecessary notice to the Companies that the Government might at some future time bring before Parliament a scheme for the purchase of railways. Nay, the Companies actually procured in one of the recitals of the Act in question a recognition of the very questionable principle that it was not the meaning of Parlia inent that Companies should be exposed to competition with railways owned or conducted by Government. 3. Provisions were also made by Parlia ment* requiring companies to carry poor persons at what were then considered cheap rates, giving to the companies in return exemption in respect of these trains from pas senger-duty. Here, again, the impossibility of determining charges beforehand is well illustrated. It has become the most profitable part of the business of many Companies to carry passengers at less than the parlia mentary cheap fares, and the only result of the enactment is an unjust exemption from general taxation, a constant dispute between the companies and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and an inducement to the Com 1 & 2 Vict. c. 98. 7 & 8 Vict. c. 85. panies to disarrange their natural traffic in order to get the benefit of the exemption. 4. It was not even thought expedient* in making the concessions of these great monopolies to the Companies, to require from them in return any service in carrying the mails. The Post-office can, it is true, require them to carry mails and mail-guards, but for all such service it has to pay just as any private person would do. In the present state of things, in rural districts, where the station has superseded the old village and is the centre of communication for the country side, it is obvious that the Post-office as well as the Telegraph should be there concentrated, and that the station-master should be postmaster, and for all districts, whether of town or country, it is desirable that the guards of all or any trains should take charge of and deliver letter-bags, as they do small parcels. These arrangements, however, under the present relations between the Postoffice and the railways are impracticable. 5. As regards inter-communication between different railways and joint arrangements for continuous traffic, the legislature has been equally impotent. In 1854 it did provide in terms that the companies should afford reasonable facilities for forwarding each others' traffic, but it rendered the enactment nugatory by placing the power of enforcing it in the hands of the Court of Common Pleas! To expect a court of justice, whose organization and machinery are directed to the determination of a definite issue between A and B, to undertake the difficult administrative duty of settling an elaborate scheme for the arrival and departure of innumerable trains at innumeraable stations, with all the requisite details of through-booking, &c., &c., is so absurd that one is almost surprised the legislature had the face to pass such an Act. It has, of course, as regards its main object, been a complete failure. It may, therefore, be stated that whilst the Railways must become, and ought to become monopolies, no provision has been made either to secure to the Public the ultimate benefit of the monopoly, or to protect the Public against the monopolizing Companies, when their interests are at variance with those of the Public. To what extent, and how far any such provision can now be made, is a question of very great difficulty. It is one which presses for solution in Ireland, far more than in this country; although it may well be expected, that when the English Companies again become prosper * 1 & 2 Vict. c. 98. 7 & 8 Vict. c. 85. + 17 & 18 Vict. c. 31. ous, and when, as we will hope may be the case, they are making the easy 10 per cent. dividend once contemplated, the public will not remain content under the present system. The question is complicated by the fact that Parliament has, by its gross mismanagement of Private Bill Legislation, contributed to the extravagant expenditure and consequent losses of the Companies, and ought not, therefore, to press hardly on them. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that, whether in Ireland or in this country, there is only one remedy, viz., purchase by the Government. For any scheme which should force on the Companies by the authority of Parliament either unity of management, or revision of rates, the Government would have to pay the Companies nearly, if not quite, as much as they would have to pay for absolute purchase. And it is more than doubtful whether any system, under which a department of the Government should undertake to control the working of the Companies, would not make confusion worse than it is at present; beside ultimately involving Government responsibility, as much as if Government were the owners. Further, if at any time it should be determined that the Government are to purchase, they must certainly throw over existing Acts, and treat the matter as one of public necessity, giving the companies the present market value of their property, with a percentage for compulsory purchase. The objections to purchase by the Government, and the difficulties of Government management, are obvious; and it is not likely that they will be faced in England, at any rate until the evils of the present system are much more felt than they are at present. One thing might possibly be done, viz., to enable local districts to make local railways, and charge the expense on the rates. This last provision will meet a difficulty which is likely to arise, whether the railways remain in the hands of private companies, or fall into the hands of the State. In the former case it is, as above noticed, probable that districts will want railways where it is not for the interest of the present Companies to make them; and in the latter without some such test of the need for a railway, and some such provisions for local outlay, it will be most difficult to avoid parliamentary jobbing. case, 8. Tramways. These are almost a new enterprise, and the Legislature in dealing with this subject has had the benefit of the experience of the difficulties which have been felt in the case of Railway and Gas and Water |