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 mendable characteristics which tend to increase a man's correspondence; and the postmaster-general who will be praised a hundred years hence will be that one who has succeeded in managing his department with the smallest possible surplus. We have only to envisage the obvious justice of this ambition to perceive the objections which attach to the adoption of trading functions by the State. Though it is very likely that railways will be nationalised in this, as they have been nationalised or subsidised in many other countries, it is quite certain that if we do nationalise them we shall be compensated by none of the advantages which make us tolerant, and even unconscious, of the abuses of the British post-office—itself in most respects one of the least imperfect of bureaucracies. The faults generally found with railways are precisely the faults of bureaucracy, and in proportion as railways become more and more united in their policy, through amalgamation and arrangements for mutual assistance, those faults constantly increase. The same will presently be found true of all governmental usurpations of private enterprise: and it cannot be doubted that in this, as in so many other respects, the functions of governments will be greatly reduced a hundred years hence.

One subject which cannot be neglected in any attempt to foresee the conditions of the