LORD HARTINGTON AND THE IRISH RAILWAYS.
iF the Government does not intend next Session to make
the purchase of the Irish Railways a Cabinet question, Lord Hartington has made some very imprudent statements. His speech on Wednesday, in answer to Sir Rowland Blenner- hasset's exhaustive defence of that policy, drove the Irish Members wild with delight, and seemed to most English Members a confession that the Cabinet approved generally of the experiment, would examine it still farther, and would, if the shareholders were only reasonable, lay a distinct proposal before Parliament. Of course, as the Marquis pointed out with some iteration, the shareholders, and especially the Preference shareholders, whose legal position is a separate one, must be moderate, and not look on the proposal as an opportunity for plunder, because if they do, the interests affected, which are sure to be powerful, will prove too strong for the Government, which can only succeed by the help of those men of both parties who believe—with Mr. Graves, for example, the Tory Member for Liverpool—that Government may by acquiring the Railways seriously diminish the public burdens. The Irish Members must be moderate too ; must not demand all the profit for Ireland, unless indeed Ireland is to pay all the purchase-money ; must not, above all, spoil a great experiment by savage demands for immediate reductions of third-class fares. They must consent for once in their lives to let their country benefit without seeking to make out of its pros- perity political capital for the hustings, and must leave Mr. Gladstone to work out his idea as a great financial measure, without worrying him at every step with political and electioneering considerations. The State, in fact, must have its recompense for its outlay and risk. Subject, however, to those reserves, it would seem clear from the Irish Secretary's speech that the Cabinet will not be sorry to be persuaded to purchase the Railways, and so anticipate the advocates of Home Rule by doing what it is quite certain, as Lord Hartington ad- mitted, an Irish Parliament would do,—if it could find the money. [Home-Rulers, we must remark en passant, always assume that the credit of Ireland would be equal in the Money Market to the credit of the United Kingdom, an assumption of the most sanguine kind.] It has evidently no objection of principle, has no fear of the cry that if Irish Railways are purchased, so must English Railways be—the very cry raised when the Irish Establishment was attacked—considers Parlia- ment "wanting in its duty "in evading the subject, and is in no way aghast at the magnitude of the proposition, which is in truth a very moderate one. The State is at least as wealthy, as able, and as powerful as the body of shareholders in the North-Western line, and those gentlemen manage most effici- ently a concern considerably larger than the whole Railway system of Ireland.
We sincerely trust that the Marquis, who is a good man of business by no means inclined to make rash promises, expresses the secret view of his colleagues in the Cabinet, for we believe that if carried out it will be of the greatest advantage to the Empire. Apart altogether from the proposition laid down by Mr. Graves, reiterated over and over again by Mr. Galt in his valuable pamphlets on the subject, and we believe accepted by Mr. Gladstone himself, that the Railways might be so managed as to lift from our shoulders much of the burden of the Debt, there can be no doubt that when the State creates a monopoly in any article of prime necessity, it ought to control that monopoly in the interest of the public. There
is no doubt that the Railway Companies possess such a
monopoly of the means of communication, and very little that they cannot be sufficiently controlled. They can be prevented from charging prohibitory rates, from risking
accidents wilfully, and from shutting up their lines, but the public needs further protection than this. It
needs to have the Railways worked in its interest, which is to facilitate communication, to carry as much as possible at as low a rate as will pay, and not in the interest of the share-
holders, which is to extract as much profit as possible out of as little work as it is possible to do. Supposing that a charge of a penny a mile yields exactly as much as a charge of a
sentence, and nowhere can it be so true or so applicable as in Ire- land, for nowhere is cheapness so completely the condition of rail- way usefulness. It is in Ireland as in India, the Railways to be THE COST OF LIVING.
They have not the means to build the plant necessary for not unnatural, is indeed well founded as to the ultimate the cheap conveyance of coal, marble, iron ore, sulphur, and a course of affairs, but it is much exaggerated as to the near- hundred bulky products, out of which, were the charges for ness of the dreaded result. The world is much more conser- transport not so heavy, great trades might be produced. They vative even as to prices than timid people imagine. The coal cannot, or at all events do not, carry fish at a price which famine which has so frightened the public is to a great extent the makes it worth while to work the fisheries, while their charges result of an accident,—the sudden increase in the demand for coal for passengers, the poverty of the people being considered, are for the iron trade which has cleared off the stocks at the pit, and for almost prohibitory, and are all the more vexatious from the a moment caused the demand to exceed the supply, thus enabling, slow rates at which the Parliamentary trains are driven, and the evident want of willingness to make the trains " corre- spond." It is clear, from the same figures, that the State, if it purchased the Railways at a reasonable price, would
be in a much better position than the Companies, for no change beyond a rise of wages in the cost of pro- apart from its splendid credit, which would enable it to duction ; and as profits are very large—we hear of collieries save two per cent. on the Railway mortgages, it would dividing forty per cent. — and wages are very high, sup. substitute a single Board for the fifty-six which at present pliee must awn be procurable sufficient to bring down exist, a single Manager for the 436 Directors, and a the price. New collieries will be opened and new labourers single system of management for the multiplicity at present take to the trade. Meanwhile people must buy cheaper coal, mix employed. It would have no motive for embarrassing traffic coke with it, use fire-balls, allowance their kitchens, and put in to injure rival owners, and no temptation to avoid in- force all those devices by which good housewives contrive to re- crease of work, which if equally profitable, could only adjust their incomes to any new demand. That manufacturers bring to it similar increase of patronage. The sum thus will suffer severely for a time is possible, but most private persona saved could be used in gradual reductions of fares, par- waste coal so much that a very little more care, or a permanently ticularly for goods, till the level is reached at which, the useful expenditure on economic stoves, will enable them to endure demand being fully supplied, reductions cease to attract for one year a demand of 40s. a ton for the best Wallsend. The fresh masses of business, and therefore to be profitable difference will not exceed an ordinary increase in the Income-tax, to the department. The gain to the people from such an and the great laws of supply and demand can be trusted more experiment, if it succeeds, must be enormous, greater perhaps fully than Mr. Lowe. As to the increase in other things, it will economically than any probable gain from any other experi- tend very much to correct itself. The complaining housewives ment, and it is certainly not one which ought to frighten a forget that while a few things have risen in price a great many British Parliament. The wildest calculation of outlay is others have as distinctly declined, that the effect of all this resort only £30,000,000, and the net income of the Railways, as now to machinery which has so raised the price of coal is to lower the managed, with all the directors and engineers and jobbing price of all manufactured articles. Rent has not seriously risen of contracts to burden them, is £1,043,000, or more than late years, except in one or two districts, the great cities being three per cent. upon the total. The difference between over-built, and the price of houses in the little towns kept down that sum and 3i per cent., at which it is certain the by the emigration from them to the great cities and the country- State can raise the money, is only £150,000 a year, by aides. Bread, though a little higher than it was ten years ago, is no means a large sum to risk in so splendid an effort very much cheaper than it was in the time of the last generation, to govern Ireland as she would govern herself. Even this when 80s. a quarter was a common price for wheat. Clothing, amount, moreover, is calculated on the supposition that Par- though dearer than before the American war, is very much liament agrees to be plundered, that no saving is secured by cheaper than it was forty years since. Furniture costs less by unity of management, and no additional traffic is attracted 30 per cent. than it did fifteen years ago, though we use very by the readiness of the Department to promote the public much more ; and lighting has been reduced more than 100 per
interest, a readiness which will be ensured by the delight with which the one hundred Irish Members in the House of cent. Every luxury of food except meat, and milk, with its pro-
Commons will worry its chief whenever they get a chance. ducts, such as butter and cheese, including tea, coffee, and sugar, For this risk we shall gratify a desire expressed by the has been reduced by legislation more than 100 per cent., while it whole Irish representation, which on this point is unanimous, is probable that with the great hay harvest and root harvest of shall double the number of State employe's—a great gain in this year meat and milk will remain stationary for some time to Ireland, where State employe:s, e.g., the constables, have shown come. The fall in the value of gold, though it continues and may unswerving loyalty—and shall teat in the most complete way increase in pace, has not as yet exceeded one-half per cent. the assertion that the State manages certain concerns better per annum, and is diminished by the enormous expansion than private individuals. Wherever the department is tested which the influx itself, as well as the new habits of man- by efficiency only, as in the dockyards, the State is an expensive kind—the habit, for instance, of working in huge partner- and lax agency ; but wherever it is tested by efficiency and ships—has given to every description of trade, manufacture, profit, as in the Post Office, the Telegraphs, and the Mint, it is or business. The fall looks more severe when old figures are coa- st once penurious and severe. If the experiment succeeds treated with those of a year like this, but if we compare seven years in Ireland, where the railways are comparatively unprofit- with seven - years, and confine the comparison to raw materials, able, where agriculture is backward and manufactures scarcely we shall find that it does not exceed the proportion we have thrive, where the mass of the people are poverty-stricken, stated. As long as the rise is not too swift, everything will adjust and where bat three great cities exist, it will surely succeed itself, the man who is doing anything getting more for his work, in Great Britain, where every condition is so much more even though he spends more to obtain what he wants. A large favourable. It is true, no doubt, that in selecting Ireland as section even of those who possess fixed incomes will suffer little the field of trial we run the risk of discrediting the experi- from the rise, the price of Consols, for example, being inflated by the ment, but, on the other hand, failure there would mean less abundanceof gold, justastheprice of cottonis. All receivers of wages than failure anywhere else ; the system of Railways is corn- will distinctly benefit by the rise in price, and so by and bye must
farthing, the Companies will charge the penny, because they pletely separate, and the people most interested are inclined thereby limit the area of their work and responsibility, but the to see the experiment tried. Above all, it is there that State officials will charge the farthing, because they thereby success will have the greatest result on the prosperity of the increase the area of the usefulness of their machine. The Empire, for if we could but make Ireland rich, one-half her whole argument for the State purchase of Railways lies in that difficulties would disappear in a day.
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