g dividends; the former ten, the latter fifteen per cent.! Said
the Government to themselves, "'Tis time we saw to this," and accordingly
they passed the _Railway Regulation Act_ of 1844. This Act provided that
if at any time, after twenty-one years, the dividend of any railway
should exceed ten per cent., the Treasury might revise the rates and
fares so as to reduce the profits to not more than ten per cent. This
expectation of high dividends, I need hardly say, has not been realised,
and the Act in this respect has been a dead letter. The Act also
conferred an option on the Treasury to acquire future railways at twenty-
five years purchase of the annual profits; or, if such profits were less
than ten per cent., the price was to be left to arbitration.

It is interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land
are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain,
to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which
provides for State purchase of the railways of the country. Whether a
solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State
control it is hard to say, but it is clear that some solution of the
problem will become imperative when the war is ended and normal
conditions return. Justice and reason demand it.

In the year 1845 three long Acts of Parliament came into force; the
_Companies Clauses_, the _Lands Clauses_ and the _Railway Clauses Acts_.
Between them they contained no less than 483 sections. Each Act was a
consolidating measure. The first contained provisions usually inserted
in Acts for the constitution of public companies, the second the same in
regard to the taking of land compulsorily, and the third consolidated in
one general statute provisions usually introduced into Acts of Parliament
authorising the construction of railways.

The _Railway Clauses Act_ authorised railway companies to use locomotive
engines, carriages and wagons; to carry passengers and goods, and to make
reasonable charges not exceeding the tolls authorised by their special
Acts. Since then the whole of the trade of transit by rail has been
conducted by the companies owning the lines.

The gauge of railways in Great Britain was not fixed upon any scientific
principle. At first it followed the width of the coal tram-roads in the
north of England, which was adopted simply on account of its practical
convenience (five feet being the usual width of the gates