Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/304

266 may suffice to keep a man out of the law courts when a resort to litigation could only end in the loss of time, temper, and money.

The law as affecting railways is defined in various ways. There are, first, the provisions of the special Acts authorising the making of the several railways; secondly, the various public Acts which have been passed from time to time for the regulation of railways; thirdly, there is what is known as common law, or the custom of the realm; and in addition to all these, there is a great body of what is called "case law," that is, the recorded decisions which have been given by the Courts at different times upon disputed questions involving the interpretation of Acts of Parliament. In the remarks that follow, we shall treat all these authorities as one for our purpose, and merely attempt to give the reader some idea of what, in the present state of the law, he has a right to demand from the railway companies in his dealings with them, and what, on the other hand, they are entitled to expect from him.

In considering railway law, nearly every thing appears to turn upon the great question of what constitutes a "common carrier," and if this point is once clearly established in a given case, the rights, liabilities, and immunities of a common carrier are pretty clearly defined by the authorities. We learn, then, that a "common carrier" is one who undertakes the conveyance of goods or passengers for hire or reward, and therefore stands in the light of a bailee. He must exercise the business of carrying as a public employment, and must undertake to carry all persons, or the goods of all persons, as the case may be, indiscriminately. Having become a common carrier, as thus defined, the law places upon him the duty