Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/516

494 quantity at a high rate; before the Railway Commissioners have been proved instances of charges in excess of maximum rates. But their influence is small, the protection which they afford is generally delusive. Writing of the period between 1828 and 1839, Mr. Hunter in his book on Railway Rates, says, 'No maximum rates were charged for goods'; and he adds, 'From 1825 to 1840 the insertion of maximum rates for passengers, though not for goods, was frequent, but not universal.' 'Not a single Act between 1838 and 1840 had a maximum rate for goods.' On a large part of the Midland Railway system there were until 1846 no maximum rates, and this may be still true of some sections of that system. A study of the speeches of the late Mr. Morrison, who more than any other person in the early history of railways urged the propriety of fixing maximum charges, shows hat he had in view actual charges, a working, not a statutory, maximum classification. It is submitted that the value of statutory maxima has been enormously exaggerated, and that the prolonged inquiry by the Board of Trade ad before the General Committee has been a search after the useless and the unattainable.

Notwithstanding the many inquiries into the subject of railway rates here and elsewhere, it is still necessary to investigate the principles regulating them. For weeks such inquiries may go on, and large masses of evidence be collected, with little edification, and decisions be arrived at arbitrarily, for want of a preliminary consideration of principles. The first thing to be done is to consider the interests involved. In controversies about rates in Parliament and the press or before committees or commissions, only traders and railway companies are usually heard of. The question is what will be the effect of this or that rate on the traders' or companies' profits. In the 3926 pages of the minutes of the Board of Trade inquiry I find scarcely a reference to any other interest. The almost equally voluminous evidence laid before the Rates Committee of l881-2 is equally silent. In the Act of 1888 there is only one phrase, and that merely parenthetical, which clearly recognizes the interests of the public at large, neither owners of railway stock or consignors of goods. The Lancashire and Cheshire Conference, formed in 1885 to represent