Page:Dwellings of working-people in London.djvu/44

 Railway Demolitions.

, in his Eighth Report as Medical Officer of the Privy Council, 1865, p. 17, speaking of the uncompensated dislodgment and inconvenience which the labouring classes suffer through the destruction of their homes in parts of towns required for railways and other public purposes, suggests, that when compulsory powers of purchase are being sought for such purposes, the local authority should have a locus standi for opposing the grant of such powers, except on condition that where many habitations were destroyed, at least as many should be substituted for them. He quotes the following opinion of a high authority, with special legal experience, Mr. John Bullar:—'It has been objected that it is foreign from the objects of (for instance) a railway company to make them house-speculators, and force them to lock up part of their capital in dwellings for the labouring classes; but this objection is altogether futile. Where it suits the interests of the shareholders, a railway company may add to their railway a canal, a dock, a harbour, a toll-bridge, a toll-road, or an hotel; and railway companies not only may, but in countless cases must, expend capital in making, and income in maintaining, for the landowners whose lands they touch, roads, sewers, drains, level-crossings, bridges, cattle-creeps, watering-places, fences, and sometimes capital in providing farm buildings. The Lands and Railways Clauses Acts provide that ample compensation in money or works, or both, shall be made to landowners whose interests are interfered with, but do not make adequate provision for protecting the poor, whose means of living may be seriously lessened by the exercise of the powers of those Acts, There is nothing inconsistent with the course of legislation for public works, that their undertakers should build as many houses as they pull down, just as they make a new piece of road where they block up the old road; and there is no reason why they should not sell their houses as soon as they think fit. The Lands Clauses Act requires them to sell within ten years after the completion of their works. If they lose by the sale the amount of the loss is the amount of the compensation, unproductive to themselves, which they make to the poor whom they dispossess; but with ordinary prudence they often may so arrange their building and selling operations as, if not to give them a profit, at least to make their loss an insignificant part of their total outlay.'