THE REPORT OF THE IRISH RAILWAY COMMISSION.

TO TILE EDITOR. OP TIIE SPECTATOR.

I look upon the lahours of this Commission as having done incalculable mischief in Ireland. They had not contented thernsAves hit reporting proper lines of rail- way, but they had gone into speculations beyond Iledr warrant, and had utterly condemned and 6abidden the intmluetion of railways into Inland. It would have been couch better if they had allowed individuals to enter into their own err terpri,es,as iu Etiglaral."-Mr. O'Currxrad.: Spe.erh on the Irish Estimates, 31e July 1834. Westminster. 15th August la& Rut—I propose to make your columns the medium of communicating to the Irish people sonic remarks upon the Report of the Irish Railway Commis- sioners. The importance of the subject is my apology for seeking to treat of it. For a length of time, no complaint has been uttered more loudly or Ire- plum!y than the vulgar one, that Ireland is full a century behind England; sod here is a deliberate official attempt made to keep her another (palter of a cen- tury hack in that great general march of improvement which all men and all nations are DOW prosecuting with a common zeal and universal success. It ir., therefore, a point of the first and most pressing moment to examine the fano

and reasons upon which these Commissioners have rested their recommenda- tions, and to ascertain with clearness and precision how far they are perfectly sound, honourable, and judicious. That task, Sir, I here undertake. It may lead me into details neither very brief nor very attractive, but the magnitude of the question at issue will vindicate my treatment of it ; it is nothing short of a question of railroads or no railroads in Ireland ; it is a question involving the expenditure of six or eight millions of money in a country in which the ab- sence of capital and the want of employment for the poor have been assigned by the political economists of every school and party as the superior overwhelm- ing evil of the social system. It may not be amiss to remind the reader, that the appointment of this Com- mission, in the first instance, was pursuant to a requisition presented to Go- vernment by a public meeting composed of Irish noblemen and landowners of the first rank and property, but not including a corresponding number of men of eminence from the mercantile classes. A motion affirmatory of the course

recommended by this public meeting, was made in the House of Lords by the Marquis of LANSDOWNE ; and the Commission issued much in the terms proposed. The address to the Crown, as recited in the letters patent creating the Commission, prayed for the appointment of competent persons to "ascertain eke best lines between any of the principal places in Ireland for which Joint Stock Companies may be willing .hereafter to apply to Parliament." These are the words of the Commission Itself, which proceeded to direct— First, A general survey of railways, to guide the Legislature iu the consider. ation of the pre jests that may be brought before it. Secondly, The best mode of directing the development of the said new and important intercourse to the channels whereby the greatest advantages may be obtained by the smallest outlay.

Thirdly, To inquire into the port or ports from whence the navigation to America may best be carried on ; and Fourthly, To inquire generally into all essential matters. To enable the Commissioners to perform these duties in an adequate manner, they were authorized to examine " persons the most competent by reason of

their situation, knowledge, or experience," and to call for all "documents, papers, or returns calculated to assist their researches." The Commissioners were, moreover, particularly instructed by a Treasury Minute as to the course they were expected to pursue and the benefit anticipated from their labours. The language used by Viscount MELBOURNE and the Chancellor of the Exche- quer upon this occasion, is so clear, so sensible and becoming, that 1 shall ex- tract a portion of it verbatim. "My Louis will watch with the greatest interest the progress of the inquiry thus instituted; they feel it, however, to he the dui y of Government to guard against any inference that it is their intention to inocrfi.re with private enterprise in its legitimate ap. p:wation to purposes tither of :awl or general improvement; they also feel it necessary that it should be distinctly understood, that by obtaining this information, no intention ur pledge is either c.yressed ur implied that works of this description should be undertaken at the pullic es; ease. "flit. main benefits to be obtained appear to my Lords to be the impat tint and au- thoritative information which may thus be laid before Parliament, and which will aid the Legislature in deciding bet ween rival and conflicting interests, the tendency which A will have of preventing ruinous competitions and the losses and expenses of litiga- tions before Committees, and the facilities which 71111.11 he afforded to capitalists and to tonpanies to judge of the must advantageous 'nude in which investments in railroads can le n.ade."

To this abstract of the objects for which the Commission was issued, and the duties it was particularly instructed to perform, 1 claim the earnest attention of my readers. For if it shall appear that the Commissioners have not done what it thus appears they were wisely appointed to do, they have failed in their office ; and however praiseworthy the zeal they may have displayed, the pains they may Lave taken, and the general abilities they may have exerted, however, moreover, we may yield the tribute of our partial praise to detached portions of the per- lcriliance, we shall not feel it right to commend or ratify the whole. othing, I take it, can be more explicit and indisputable than the assertion I *suture to make, that all parties concerned—the Irish interests, with which the idea of the Commission originated, the House of Lords, which directly solicited it from the Crown, and the hlinisters who conceded it—far from meaning to -Prevent the extension of private enterprise and the introduction of joint stock railroad companies into Ireland, sought to promote that very state of things, ev enabling the undertakers of such works to effect, with the least difficulty, thine lines of communication between principal places which would be most remunerative to them and beneficial to the public. Directly opposed to this salutary intention, are the principal recommendations of the Commissioners; sahich suppress all the projected lines, for the aid and benefit of which the Com. mission was appointed, and call upon the Government to advance to one body at capitalists, under one management and control, a large portion of the capital required for completing a new plan of communicating lines, which makes the Interest uud convenience of every place in Ireland subservient to the project of rendering Dublin the centre of communication with London. I will not here pause to show how great and overwhelming would be the patronage and power which this monopoly would vest in the hands of the Government of the day, totally adverse it would be to all past and present forms and usages of the constitution, and how heavily injurious it could not fail to prove to the improve- :I:eta of Ireland. I think I can do something better. I think I can show that these recomntendations were not only contrary to the spirit and letter of the authority under which they were given, but that they were otherwise uncalled- for and unnecessary—that if the Commissioners had taken the course so sensibly natinted out to them, they might have found by the examination of competent experi:nced persons, (by the way, they do not appear to have examined a single witness,) that the greater portion of the lines projected by private enterprise might he safely permitted to proceed, and that there is as good evidence to show that they will prove remunerative speculations, as there was in the cases of the majority of the English lines for which the Legislature has granted Acts of Parliament.

Having thus traced t se use which the Commission might have been, having explaieed the objects for n Ilia it was really instituted, and the powers m n. ;erred upon it, I shall say a few words of the Commissioners themselves. It will be but fair to give the character of the individuals before I criticize their labours in detail. The choke certainly did the Government neither credit nor discredit. Tbe Commission, as I think I shall presently show, has been an utter and most injurious failure ; but for that no great blame is, in my opinion, ehargeable on the Minister. I may, I think, fairly observe of it, that though by no menus a bad one, it might easily have been better. Hail some such men ea WALKED., STEPHENSON, or LOCKE, been included, we should have bad the strong hand and sound judgment of practical experience applied to studies and proceedings in which they were indisputably required. As it is, we have a theoretical view of the subject, in many parts certainly both ingenious and instructive, but one which, as a whole, I venture to affirm is never to be acted upon. We gather, I apprehend, from the case, only another example to prove now difficult it is, in a practical country like this, to calculate beforehand upon the result of an experiment for devising new means of attaining objects which have already been otherwise effectively attained by long-established modes of proceeding. These Commissioners possessed unquestionably unexceptionable eiaims to notice and preferment in such an inquiry, and yet they have done nothing but mischief to the cause they were charged to serve. In this respect, however, they do not stand alone. We had very recently a Commission, corn- ikraer1 of some of the first men in the country, to inquire into the beat means of introducing an Irish poor-law ; and those gentlemen, after a lengthenedreZ gation, during which they directed their attention to every topic bearing lo tct remotest degree upon the subject matter, and after collecting a voluminous body of the most interesting information upon the state of Ireland sad the condition of the people, came to a firm conclusion that an Irish poor-law wax , chimera—a thing altogether out of the question, in short, all but an imp*. biRty. These highly-gifted and purely.mintled men reported directly in the teeth of the proposition they were appointed to sustain ; and in less that, ec, years after, the Minister laid before Parliament an Irish Poor-law Bill. It is now the law of the land. Infelicitous as the precedent undoubtedly is, it hi, been closely followed by the Commissioners before us; who were nominated to report upon the best lines of railroad for Ireland, and who have completed their task, after a genuine Irish fashion, by affirming that no railroad in Ireland via pay more than 34 or 4 per cent., which is tantamount to a declaration that, et Ireland, we can have no railroads at all, although the only made railroad in the country pays 6 per cent. Let us hope that the parallel I have instanced a destined to prove complete in all points, and that, as the opinions of the Irish Poor.law Commissioners have not availed to deprive Ireland of a poor-law, to the recommendations of the Irish Railway Commissioners will not suffice to prevent private enterprise from constructing railroad after railroad through the island.

I return to the Commissioners. Mr. DRUMMOND possesses talents which have enabled him to distinguish himself in various public employments to which he has been advanced. Whether I look at him while employed on the Ord. mance Survey of Ireland, while Private Secretary to Lord ALTHORP, while Boundary Commissioner for the Municipal Reform Bill of England, or while Under Secretary for Ireland, I find him rising in the best spirit of honourable competition amongst his associates, and winning respect and applause alike as s man of science and a politician. Nevertheless, the share he has had in the la. bows of this Commission cannot, I should think, have been very great. Of the correctness of that remark, the Report itself affords much internal evidence, which is largely confirmed by the weight and variety of his official duties. He was no doubt consulted, and probably advised much of what is truly able and instructive in the Report ; but the weak and really vicious points, and more particularly the artful vein of studied partiality which pervades an essential poi. Iron of the volume, must, I should hope, have been purposely concealed from his eye up to the last moment, when it may have escaped his attention alto. getter. Colonel BURGOYNE is the Chief Commissioner of the Irish Board of Public Works, to which he was appointed by Lord STABLES', when Secretary for Ire. land. That situation naturally pointed him out as a fit person to conduct An investigation of this kind. He took his place in the Commission as it were virtute ; and it should not be concealed, that perhaps there is not a place- man in Ireland against whom the voice of complaint has up to this day been to little raised as against the gallant Colonel.

Of Professor BauLow it is impossible to speak in any terms but those of

praise. The Professor of Mathematics at Woolwich Academy bas acquired for himself a philosophical reputation in all that is scientific in railroads, to the honours of which the writer of these lines can add nothing. With reference to that learned gentleman'a association with this Commission, I have room for only one observation; and that is, an expression of my sincere regret to leant that the duties of his Professor's chair in this country did not permit him to spend more than six weeks in Ireland out of the year and nine months to which the inquiry was extended.

Mr. GRIFFITH is an engineer of extensive practice and excellent repute. Lion. He has been for many years in the employment of Government, and is generally esteemed as a practical authority upon the important subject of re. chiming waste lands and the eulogy of Ireland. He does not, however, ap- peal to have been conversant with the construction of railroads, and he is gene• rally known to have been hostile to their introduction into Ireland.

After this sketch, let us look back for a moment at the history and results

of our Commissions in Ireland, from the celebrated Bog Commission of 1803, which cost so much money and produced so much valuable knowledge and so many fine maps, down to the Railway Commission of 1836. They suggest to us, I am much inclined to say, but one piece of information, which is this—if it be at any time desired to prevent any thing, (no matter what,) from being well done in Ireland, issue a Commission to inquire into the best way of doing it, and to a certainty there will either be an end of it, or it will be spoiled altogether. If enterprise is astir, and improvements are projected, and the Irish are talking of making what they so much want—a little money; if they are preparing themselves to follow in this respect new and better courses, and adopt the profitable example of England and the Continent, appoint a set of highly-gifted, and highly-placed gentlemen to report upon the surest way of reaping the proposed harvest, and the consequences will be this, with- out fail : they will point out every the minutest detail, with so nice an exactitude, show the doubtful to be so very doubtful, the bad so very bad, and the hazardous to he so very hazardous ; they will place all the pros and cons so mathematically in their just relation's, and he so very learned and didactic, that after teaching every thing that is to be taught, and explaining every particular, direct and contingent, that in the remotest degree admits of explanation ; after showing the plain to be so very plain and the true so very true, and thetnselves so wise, so prudent, and so per- fectly disinterested ; in short, after completely exhausting the subject over and over again, men's minds are tired out hefore they have half done, the peo• pie by common consent vote the whole affair, Commission and Commissioner', a dead bore; and the public attention will relieve itself by seizing bold of some other project, as to which, fortunately for the country, little or nothing is known, so that people are left to themselves to take it up or let it alone, just as they please. Sir, the process of these formal official inquiries robs speculation of the charm of that uncertainty which is necessary to its existence, and anatomises enterprise until the imagination is rot left a single unexplored point upon which its worn and damaged spirit can alight and adventure. It would thus appear that a working commission—locus a non lucendo—is one which never leads to work at all. This is the general rule derived from experience. There are, however, some exceptions ; and to make sure in any given case that an exception shall not arise, let the Commission only be an un- pad one, and it will infallibly come within the affirmed category. Some secret and never.failing instinct seems to force all unpaid commissions to come to this conclusion, that their labours having been unremunerative to them. selves, they must, pare ratione, be unproductive of profit to all other persons. Accordingly, the provision and consequences uniformly correspond ; and in every case I am acquainted with, an unpaid Irish commission answers to the negative quality. If you have a reader who doubts me, let him read the heave folios and fine maps,

1st, of the Bog 6,ommission, 2d, of the Poor-law Commission, 3d, of the Irish Fishery Commission, 4th, of the Railway Commission. When he has done that, I will cheerfully enter into any discussion with hint he may choose to hazard in answer to the assertion I have last made. In the mean time, I shall pursue my first purpose, and offer some further re* marks in • second letter on the Railway Report ; remaining, Sir,

Your obedient servant, ANGLO•HIBERNLIS.