>£U-V] RAILWAY DEPOSITS DISCUSSED IN A LETTER TO * THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE. BY THOMAS COATES. 1 1 LONDON: P. S. KINO, 34, PARLIAMENT STREET. 1864. PRICE SIXPENCE. LIBRARY BUREAU OF RAILWAY ECONOMICS, WASHINGTON, D. C. - J04 EOON0rs|J05 e S» EXCHAWtf HEvS^^T LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS. JOHN HENRY SCOURFIELD, ESQ., M.P. Sir, rO Oh It seems to me that I may, without presumption, seek to add something to the information which the Committee over which you preside are acquiring, with respect to the deposit of money as a security for the construction of railways. I am the more moved to do this, because somewhat long experience of the matter has made me conversant, not only with the details of the process, but with the principles which ought to guide that deposit. My testimony, indeed, <2 was sought upon the matter, and I have been, as our brethren north of the Tweed call it, “ praecog- x “ nosced but (as often happens in these cases after praecognition) my evidence has been dispensed with, perhaps because it was useless, perhaps because it did not conduce to the end in view; but I am espe¬ cially moved to intervene in this matter because, ' although not concerned in the Bill out of which the discussion has immediately arisen, the proceeding - ' which occasions the discussion was adopted upon my advice. If the eminent solicitor whose conduct has been impugned, had not been strengthened by \ my advice when he consulted me concerning the V transfer of Stock in the case of a Railway Bill for which I was Agent three years ago, and had not been advised by me that he could make the deposit in the manner which is now deemed obnoxious, he b 2 ( 4 ) would certainly have avoided that course of pro¬ ceeding. Wherefore, if the Standing Orders have been violated, or if what is called in the Report of the Standing Orders Committee, the “ intention and “ spirit ” of the Statute have been violated (whatever may be the meaning of that phrase), it is I, and not Mr. Baxter, who am responsible for that violation. The great difficulty which meets us at the outset of this discussion is just the vagueness of that phrase “ spirit and intention.” When men are ac¬ cused of violating a law they know what they have to deal with ; the question is confined within certain definite limits, and men of ordinary apprehension (and I seek no higher quality) can themselves judge whether they are guilty or innocent of the offence charged against them. But who knows what is the meaning of the words “ spirit and intention ” of a law ? Practically they mean whatsoever the indi¬ vidual who uses them happens to deem the spirit and intention. They are, like all vague words (and I say it without disrespect to the Committee by whom they are used), good to involve some assumed premises, useless for the condemnation of those against whom they are aimed. Let me, therefore, confine myself to perhaps the humbler, certainly the safer, limit of defining what the rule is which guides the deposit of money in the case of Railway Bills ; what the origin of that rule was; what changes have taken place in its applica¬ tion ; and how the law, whether prescribed by Statute or by the Standing Orders of Parliament, now stands in relation to the matter. ( 5 ) Formerly as a condition precedent to the introduc¬ tion of a Railway Bill, it was necessary that a Sub¬ scription Contract should he entered into, whereby men bound themselves to subscribe three-fourths of the estimated expense of the Railway, and that each Subscriber paid up, or stated that he had paid up, by way of Deposit on his Shares, 10 per cent, upon the amount so subscribed; and in a Schedule to all Ihese Subscription Contracts one column was devoted to “ Amount paid up.” But by degrees it was found that these Subscription Contracts were practically inefficacious. With respect to established Companies, not only were they inefficacious, but they were fictitious. The individuals who affected to subscribe money in a Companies Contract, did not subscribe; the amounts which those individuals affected to pay up, they never did pay up. A quarter of a century ago the subscribing towards the construction of new Railways was a ’favourite form either of investment or of speculation. Experience proved these subscrip¬ tions to be at least unprofitable, often hazardous. And so the good sense of Parliament induced them to conform their Orders to the change of circumstances, and to abandon these Subscription Contracts. But it was another condition precedent to the intro¬ duction of the Bill, that the amount so professed to have been paid up by the Subscribers should be deposited in the Bank of England by way of evi¬ dence that the subscription had really been made. It was at that time no part of the policy of Parliament to impound the subscription,—all that was asked by either House was that there should be material evi¬ dence of the truth of the Subscription Contract by ( 6 ) the payment into the hands of a Public Officer of the Deposit. When the Subscription Contracts ceased to be enforced, the payment of a Deposit was however maintained. Not a word was said as to the source from which the Deposit should be derived. No one dreamt of what seems to me to be the prevailing folly, that the Deposit Money should be found by the ostensible promoters of the Bill. I call it a foolish supposition that the money should be so found, because notoriously in the case of existing Companies who promote Bills it cannot be so found. The Midland Railway Company (and it will be seen why I use them most for the sake of illustration), when they are promoting a Bill which renders necessary a Deposit of perhaps £100,000, do not and cannot deposit out of their own funds that sum. Either they grossly violate a restriction which they have accepted as a condition of all the Statutes obtained by them from Parliament within the last twenty years, or they must borrow the money for that Deposit. A Railway Company is prohibited by express enactment from using any of its capital for the purposes of these Deposits; it is equally bound to apply the whole of its surplus income to¬ wards Dividends among its Shareholders. Thus it can have no funds whatever of its own from which to obtain a Deposit. The Midland Company, it seems, affects the virtuous process of obtaining the money by con¬ tribution from its Directors in equal proportions. But no one can suppose that the eight or ten Direct¬ ors who contribute the money, have lying at their bankers’ the large sums required for the purposes of these Deposits; they either do in fact apply the ( 7 ) money of the Company, or they borrow the money from their bankers or from some other source. Existing Railway Companies then, quite as much as new Companies, violate the law, if the law prescribes that the money deposited shall be the money of the promoters themselves. In their case the promoters are the Company, the money cannot be that of the Company. Then as to new Companies : I have already said what it is almost superfluous to say, that now-a-days men will not subscribe, before the passing of the Bill, towards the construction of a Railway. And in truth, nothing can be more illogical than the notion that the quality of a Railway, or its desirableness, must he judged by the fact that the persons who are ultimately to use it, were subscribers towards its con¬ struction. It is with Railways as with all other objects—the man who wants them is not necessarily, will probably not be, the man who can find funds for their construction. The Manufacturer who seeks an easy method of obtaining the material of his manufacture, or an easy channel for conveying the produce of his manufactures to the market, has his capital invested in his machinery, or in the other processes of his business; and though he may use a Railway, and though his use of it may make the undertaking- lucrative, he may not have funds to apply, or may not have inclination to apply funds, to the new business of Railway-making. And so, by degrees, excepting in the case of existing and affluent Com¬ panies, the construction of Railways has been left in the hands of Contractors. And here let me give ( 8 ) my poor meed of homage to a class of men who strangely enough are in this country often talked of with a sneer. For my part, I cannot help looking with reverence upon those who are covering the whole civilized world with monuments of their enter¬ prise and their skill. Without them the intercourse of nations would be interrupted, and to them it is that this country, above all, owes a deep debt of gratitude. It is not only within the limits of the four seas that the means of communication have been facilitated by the enterprise of Railway Contractors, but it is no exaggeration to assert that, by the works which their skill and their capital are construct¬ ing in Asia, the dominion of England over India is more than by any other means secured. And I can¬ not understand how it can either be an imputation upon them that they undertake the task of construct¬ ing Railways in the United Kingdom, or how it can be any imputation upon the undertaking itself, that it has its origin in those who devote their capital and their experience to the construction of these works. In fact, the method of obtaining new Rail¬ ways now-a-days is two-fold, and only two-fold— either existing Companies must make them, or they must be made with the capital of Contractors. Now, existing Companies hate Branches, and they never make either branches or extensions of their under¬ takings, except for the purposes of aggression. A town or a neighbourhood may for years solicit a Company to accommodate their population by a Branch out of the Main Line, but they are always met by this answer : “ Branches are unprofitable— ( 9 ) “ find the capital yourselves, and we will work “ the Branch upon terms more or less advantageous “ to you.” No doubt, for the purposes of aggression, branches and extensions are made,—we shall come to these presently. For the mere purpose of serving the population, I broadly affirm that no Company will make a branch. Let me again take my friends the Midland Bail¬ way Company as an illustration of this proposition. Sheffield, with its vast population and its unrivalled industry, has been for years soliciting the, Midland Railway Company to improve its accommodation. The Midland Company have often promised to accede to this request—uniformly they have violated their promise. This year the inhabitants of Sheffield and of the district between Sheffield and Chesterfield, driven by the refusal or the evasion of the Mid¬ land Company to fulfil its virtual engagements, themselves submit to Parliament a line which has in view not only the benefit of Sheffield but of a much larger district. Then the Midland Company, in order to baffle them, do that which for years it had been their duty to do,—they themselves promote a line from Chesterfield to Sheffield; and by way of creating prejudice against their opponents, raise this question about tbe “ ces alienum as though the Com¬ pany had not itself borrowed, and of necessity bor¬ rowed, the money deposited for its own Bill. There cannot be a stronger illustration of the principle which I lay down as an axiom that existing Com¬ panies will not, for the benefit of the population, make branches or extensions, and hate those who do. b 3 ( 10 ) Thus, a town or a district finds itself isolated, and the process by which it obtains a Railway is pretty constantly this:—certain persons subscribe according to their means towards the construction of the Railway—they then apply to a neighbouring Company, from whose line that Railway is to issue, to learn upon what terms the Company will support the project; probably they are discountenanced, and then they are driven to resort, or at all events they do apply, to a Contractor, who bargains with them, if he deems the scheme a valuable one (and none are better judges than Contractors of the value of these schemes), that he will undertake the task of con¬ structing the Railway upon certain conditions, and that he will find money to deposit in pursuance of the Standing Orders; and so the scheme is in these respects ripe for Parliament—the money is deposited, and the Bill is brought in. The Contractor, who has his capital employed in useful undertakings, probably borrows the money, but the money is there—the bona fides of the scheme is demonstrated by the deposit of the money ; and whether he pays it out of his own balance at the banker’s, or whether he borrows it from the bankers, or borrows it from any other source, is a matter of supreme indifference. Now, I am at a loss to understand how the “ spirit and inten- “ tion ” of the Standing Orders are violated in this case. That the letter is not violated is quite certain; and really, if Parliament has a spirit and intention, the least it can do for those who are to obey its orders is, as the French say, to “ consecrate ” that Spirit in written Laws. I believe that, if the origin of some of the greatest ( 11 ) undertakings of the country were investigated, it would be found in the ingenuity of Engineers in former days, and of Engineers and Contractors now. I have heard from the lips of a gentleman who has been connected professionally with the greatest Railway Companies in England from their origin to the present time, that the London and Birmingham Rail¬ way was devised in his office at Birmingham, be¬ tween him and the late Robert Stephenson ; and any man who carefully considers the matter must see that, in the case of Railways, as in all other things, those whose minds are perpetually dwelling upon the sub¬ ject, and who have all the information needful for forming an opinion, are the best guides. But, beside the Standing Orders of the two Houses, there is another ingredient in this transaction. It was necessary for the Legislature to prescribe that the money to he deposited in pursuance of its Standing Orders should he received by the Public Officer into whose hands it was to be paid, and should be repaid in certain circumstances. Wherefore, in the year 1846, and during the prevalence of Subscription Contracts, an Act passed, of which the very title is important —it is “ An Act to amend an Act of the Second “ Year of Her present Majesty, for providing for “ the custody of certain Monies paid, in pursuance “ of the Standing Orders of either House of Parlia- “ ment, by Subscribers to Works or Undertakings “ to be effected under the authority of Parliament.” And the whole scope of the Act, the whole and sole purpose for which it is passed, is this,—that the Ac¬ countant-General shall take possession of moneys, and shall, in certain circumstances, repay the moneys of ( 12 ) which he has so taken possession. The Act contem¬ plates that the money shall he paid by the Promoters of the Undertaking, and it directs that it shall he repaid to those by whom it has been deposited. It also enacts that, instead of being at the expense of find¬ ing the cash to deposit with the Accountant-General, in certain cases Stock instead of cash shall he transferred into his name. The Act in no wise affects the ques¬ tion at issue, that question being whether the money deposited must he the bond fide property of the per¬ sons who deposit it, or whether it may be borrowed for the purpose of deposit. Whether their own money, or whether borrowed money, the Act equally operates, and one of the most eminent lawyers of the day has declared it as his deliberate opinion that it is idle to deny that borrowed money is as much within the contemplation of the Act as money belonging to the Promoters of the Bill. And so I entirely dismiss this technical matter. No man of sense and business will suppose that in the case, for instance, of the Metropolitan District Bill, any individuals had 640,000/. wherewith to pay the Deposit which the Standing Orders of Parlia¬ ment required in that case. No man, the least conversant with the question, believes that the Midland Railway Company in the Chesterfield case did otherwise than borrow the Deposit either of its Bankers or of its Directors. No one can doubt that if the Directors did really pay the money, each man borrowed the money from his Bankers, and will be repaid by his Company the interest which he must pay to his Bankers for the loan. The gravamen of the charge seems to be, that if money is borrowed, the lender and not the Promoter ( 13 ) of the Bill has practically the control of the Bill, or, as the Report of the Standing Orders Committee states—“ The real Promoters are obliged to divest “ themselves to a great extent of the control of the “ Bill, and to place the power of withdrawing it, “ whatever may be the judgment of Parliament upon “ its merits, in the hands of those who have lent the “ Stock for depositand then there is some reitera¬ tion concerning the “ abuse ” which has grown up under the present system. Now, I suppose it is owing to some dullness of perception on my part that I cannot see what all this means. It was always in the breast of Promoters, he they who they may—existing Company, land-owners, mine- owners, contractors—to withdraw a Bill, whatever might be the judgment of Parliament upon its merits. Over and over again, within the experi¬ ence of every man conversant with these matters, something has been inserted in a Bill by one or the other House, in the last stage perhaps of its pro¬ ceedings, unpalatable to the Promoters ; and then the Promoters have withdrawn the Bill in spite of the judgment of Parliament upon its merits. What the intervention of a third party has to do with the matter I am at a loss to judge. Parliament asks for two things, each perfectly distinct from the other ; first, that the position of the suitors for a Private Bill shall he demonstrated by the money which they have deposited ; next, that if the Act passes, there shall be deposited a sum of money by way of security that the powers granted by the Act shall be carried into effect. It is the confusion of these two perfectly distinct things which seems to me to lie at the bottom of the Report of ( 14 ) the’ Standing Orders Committee, and indeed at the bottom of the whole clamour which was made in the Sheffield and Chesterfield case. If there is a sum of money deposited in pursuance of the Standing Order antecedently to the first reading of the Bill, that Standing Order is complied with, and there is nothing more to he said concerning it. If, when the Royal Assent is given to the Bill, a sum of money is impounded in the hands of the Accountant- General, that other Standing Order is complied with, and there is nothing more to be said concerning it. To jumble the two Standing Orders together is a somewhat clumsy method of creating a prejudice. Let me illustrate this by the case of an existing Company. A Bill brought in, for instance, by the Midland Railway Company, is with certain modifica¬ tions passed by one or the other House; hut, not¬ withstanding the judgment of that House upon its merits, the Midland Railway Company at a meeting of their shareholders can override the judgment of the House, and, in spite of the affirmation by the Commons or the Lords of the expediency of passing the Bill, may withdraw the Bill from further con¬ sideration ; and I am at a loss to understand how that right to withdraw a Bill, in spite of the judg¬ ment of Parliament upon its merits, is at all affected by the persons in whom the discretion rests,—whether a majority of a meeting of shareholders, or the Directors themselves, or the three or four individuals who sign the Petition for the Bill. And so let us dismiss all these technical refine¬ ments and come to the real question at issue— whether henceforward Railways may he promoted ( 15 ) by any others than existing Companies. Those who visit the purlieus of Parliament have been hear¬ ing of late murmurs more or l,ess distinct about “ Contractors’ Lines,” and the insecurity of Railway property, if Contractors, and Engineers, and Attor¬ neys are permitted to promote undertakings with the view immediately to damage, ultimately to he bought off by, existing Companies. In short, under the pretext of defining by whom the deposit of money required by Parliament as a condition precedent to the introduction of a Railway Bill shall be found, there is hidden the intention of preventing any Railway enterprise, except by existing Companies. That is the broad issue to be tried—that is the ques¬ tion which I trust that the Committee over whom you preside will have perpetually in view. It is affirmed, more or less loudly, that Railway property is rendered insecure by the prosecution of what I will call, for brevity’s sake, “ Contractors’ “ Lines.” Now, I affirm deliberately, after long experience and careful observation, the precise re¬ verse of that statement. I say that it is by the doings of existing Companies that Railway property is undermined. They, and not Contractors, are the aggressors ; they are the invaders of their neigh¬ bours’ property ; they are perpetually exercising their ingenuity to acquire their neighbours’ traf¬ fic, to increase their wealth at the expense of their rivals. And let me, by way of justifying this assertion, confine myself mainly to the trans¬ actions of the present Session ; and if the illustrations which I will now give are not adequate to the proof of my proposition, then I am content to be censured ( 16 ) by these great bodies to whom I owe much, and the confidence of many of whom I have the honour to enjoy. Let us begin with the greatest Companies : Lanca¬ shire and Yorkshire are mainly served internally by the Railway Company which derives its name from those two counties ; the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway runs mainly east and west, and serves, often with more than one line of communication, every important manufacturing town in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. The capital which is invested in it is enormous; the conduct of its busi¬ ness is free from reproach ; its dividends scarcely, I believe, exceed five per cent.; and, above all, it is in nowise aggressive. The town of Black¬ burn is within its system, and with a view to the accommodation of that town, and of the district south of it, the Company this year, at the request of the inhabitants, introduced into Parliament a Bill for the making of a Railway between Blackburn and a place called Chorley. Now the London and North-Western Railway Company are competitors with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway ; and it so happens that they have no access to Blackburn, or, according to the Rail¬ way phraseology, are not “ at ” Blackburn. But they coveted a share in the traffic of Blackburn, and so, not content with their own gigantic undertaking, they invade the territory of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company, and themselves project a Rail¬ way to Blackburn. It pleased the Committee to whom the Bills of the two Companies were sub¬ mitted to sanction this invasion, and if the Bills pass the House of Lords, the London and North-Western ( 17 » Company will be at Blackburn. They will probably not convey any traffic there with their own engines, but they will be entitled in negotiation with the Lanca¬ shire and Yorkshire Company to claim a share of what profit may be derived from the conveyance of the traffic by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company to and from Blackburn, and to enforce that claim by the threat, that if a share of the profit is not given to them, they will enter into competition with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company for that traffic. The Great Eastern Railway Company, not content with the monopoly of the carriage both by Canal and by Railway in four of the most fertile counties of Eng¬ land, project this year a new line of Railway parallel to the Great Northern Railway between Peter¬ borough and Doncaster. Their Bill is rejected. On the other hand, they impute to the Great Northern Railway Company that, not content with being at Liverpool, at Manchester, at Leeds, and at Wake¬ field, the Great Northern Company are by Bills of this Session invading the Great Eastern territory at Cambridge and at Lynn. With the proceedings of the London and South- Western Company in the present Session I am not well acquainted, but their inroads upon the Great Western district are too notorious to be dwelt uj)on; whilst they charge the Great Western Company with repeated attacks on the sacred territory of Southampton. But of all the invaders of their neighbours’ lands, ( 18 ) the Midland Railway Company are the most per¬ severing and the most successful. Their original Undertaking is situated in the most fertile and the most industrious district of the country. If wealth was the object of the Company, that district would have afforded it to them in abundance, and so it did. But wealth made them ambitious, and it is now noto¬ rious that the determination of the Midland Railway Company is to be everywhere. They have a port at Morecambe Bay, on the Western Coast of Eng¬ land. They last year adopted a “ Contractors’ Line,” which lodges them upon the Wash on the Eastern Coast. They have by a Bill which has just passed a Committee of the House of Commons procured to themselves a share of the Lancaster and Car¬ lisle Railway under the avowed threat, that if they were not admitted to that share they would themselves construct a Railway close alongside of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway. They are also by a Bill of this year at Cheltenham, in spite, as the Great Western Company say (I know not with what truth), of agreements with the Great Western Company not to violate that territory. And I need scarcely recur to that greatest of all attacks upon vested interests, the extension of the Midland Railway Company to London, although they had, by statutory agreement, uninterrupted access to London over the Great Northern Railway, and had also by valid agreements access to the Metro¬ polis over the London and North-Western Railway. Thus I think I have shown that if Railway pro¬ perty is rendered insecure by aggressions into what are deemed to be the particular districts, or, to call ( W ) them by a more ambitious name, territories of exist¬ ing Companies, those aggressions are peculiarly the acts of existing Companies; and if one enumerates all the “ Contractors’ lines ” which are projected in any Session of Parliament, they will be found to bear an infinitesimal proportion to the lines projected by existing Companies for the mere purposes of invasion. The policy of the Midland Railway Company alone does more to undermine Railway property, and to depreciate the value of Railway securities, than all the “ Contactors’ lines ” which are or ever have been devised. Now I am not passing any opinion upon this policy; I neither condemn it, nor, undoubtedly, do I applaud it. Perhaps it is for the public benefit that every town should he able to derive from various sources the materials for its industry Or for its comfort, and should be able to pour into various channels the products of that industry; and that Railway Companies, whether impelled by the exi¬ gencies of poverty, or the arrogance of wealth, or the mere restlessness of rapacity, should remove their neighbours’ landmarks. But what I do con¬ demn is these Gracchi, who go about whimpering against sedition. They seem to me much in the same light as the predatory clans of the Scottish High¬ lands in former times, who desired to exterminate the Children of the Mist, not from abhorrence of rapine, but from a desire to keep the spoil in their own hands, and a scorn of freebooters who were with¬ out a qualification. And do not, I pray you, Sir, suppose that these ( 20 ) remarks are Beside the question which your Com¬ mittee has to try. If you adopt any resolutions which shall practically leave in the hands of existing Railway Companies the future' extension of the Rail¬ way system, you will do irreparable injury to the country. A town which is without a Railway (and there are still many such) is isolated, its manufac¬ tures must needs cease, its industry be paralysed. These towns, as I have already demonstrated, will never attain new Railways by the aid of existing Companies, unless for the purposes of aggression, or of resisting aggression—they must needs rely upon “ Contractors’ Lines.” If, there¬ fore, your Committee adopt any scheme which shall render it necessary for those who want Railways to take money out of their own pockets, and to deposit it with the Accountant-General, you deliberately put an end to the extension of Railways, excepting, as I have said, when those extensions are intended for the invasion of a neighbour’s territory, or for the resisting of such invasion. I believe that as your Committee ponder more and more carefully this grave matter, they will find that it is not the origin of a particular Railway, whether that origin be the suggestion of an Engineer, or of a Contractor, or of an existing Company, but that it is the merits of the Undertaking itself which alone must guide Parliament in its adoption or in its rejection. And so it is that some of the most sagacious of those Members of Parliament who preside over Railway Committees, when once they have been satisfied that the Standing Orders have been literally complied with, and that the Deposit has been duly made, ( 21 ) devote their minds from that moment to an investiga¬ tion of the merits of the project before them, and set aside all the squabbles about the conception of the project and the source of the funds. And permit me to repeat here an instance which orally I have already mentioned to you—a better illustration of the futility of all these inquiries into the source from which the money deposited with the Accountant-General may be derived cannot be adduced. In the Session of 1863 a Bill was brought into Parliament for the construction of Docks at the mouth of the Avon. The usefulness of these Docks it was difficult to deny. But the Bill was opposed, and righteously opposed, by the Cor¬ poration of Bristol, who are owners of the Port. It was also opposed by inhabitants of Bristol having large property at stake, as they thought, in the question; and the Bill was rejected, and as I think properly rejected. This year the same project has been brought before Parliament. The fiscal rights of the Corporation of Bristol were preserved, and the Corporation wisely concurred in the Bill. The indi¬ vidual opponents remained, and they stated their case (and a strong case it was) to the Committee of the Commons to whom the Bill was referred. Now it was proved that this was eminently a “ Contractors’ “ scheme ”—it was proved that no money whatever had been subscribed—that the money deposited was the Contractors’ money, and that in fact, although certain landowners and others were ostensible Pro¬ moters of the Bill, the expenses of the Bill were to be paid by the Contractors. The Committee upon the Bill were not moved by any such objections; they ( 22 ) considered whether the scheme was wise or not— whether, in short, it would contribute to the prosperity of the city of Bristol, and to the extension of the commerce of the country, or not. These things were proved to their satisfaction, and they passed the Bill. Knowing the Contractors, I do not in the least doubt, as the Committee did not doubt, that the work will be honourably accomplished ; whereas, if the Com¬ mittee had been deterred from passing the Bill by these objections to the source of the deposit, a great enterprise would have been prevented, and the hopes of a great commercial city would have been disap¬ pointed. Let me mention a smaller instance. If you will take a Map of England you will see that between Sutton, which is on the River Nene, and the town of King’s Lynn, there is a manifest break of Railway communication. Three years ago contractors undertook to fill up this gap. There was no bona-fide subscription (to use a favourite jargon), there was no evidence whatever of the means whereby the work was to be accomplished ; but the money was deposited in pursuance of the Standing Orders before the Bill was introduced into Parlia¬ ment, and when the Act passed money was im¬ pounded in the hands of the Accountant-General. The Standing Orders were in each case complied with, and the Lynn and Sutton Railway will in a few weeks be opened to the public. I could multiply such instances to satiety, but these are enough; and I must conclude this letter, which has I fear already become tedious to you, by ( 23 ) repeating my hope that yon, and that the Committee over whom yon preside, will not be led astray by idle declamation about the jeopardy in which Railway property is now placed by the invasion of “ Con- “ tractors’ Lines,” but will satisfy yourselves with what seems to me the more prudent course, of adhering to that which the wisdom of Parliament has already prescribed, namely, that there shall be a deposit in money before the introduction of a Bill, and that money shall be impounded by way of security that the powers of an Act shall be carried into effect. I am, Sir, Your very faithful servant, Thomas Coates. LONDON : 1‘RINTKD BY W. CLOW KB AND SONS, ST AM FOB D STREET, AND CHARING CROSS.