Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/269

 an Act was passed as long ago as 1844 empowering the Government to acquire the whole of the railways on certain terms, and that the Act in question has never been repealed. In the House of Commons on the 5th May, 1883, Mr. Watt moved a resolution to the effect:—

"That in the opinion of this House the time has arrived when the Government should appoint a Committee or Royal Commission to take into consideration the question of acquiring the railways of the United Kingdom in accordance with the provisions contained in the General Railway Act of 1844."

The motion was, however, negatived.

It is to be feared that supporters of this proposition have not fully realised the magnitude of the operation they recommend, and nothing is more probable than that, if it ever came to be carried out, the sanguine anticipations of its advocates, as to its financial success, would prove to have been based upon fallacy. The Act of 1844 authorised the transfer of the railways to the State at 25 years' purchase of their average profits for the three years antecedent to the purchase, and this sum would be represented by about eight hundred and twenty-five millions sterling; but if ever a scheme of the kind comes within the region of practical legislation, it will certainly not be carried out on the basis of an old and obsolete Act of Parliament, passed at a time when the railway system was in its infancy. To commend itself to the legislature of the present day, and to overcome the strenuous opposition it would undoubtedly encounter, it must proceed upon the principle of equitable treatment of the shareholders of the existing companies, who would have to receive not merely the