nse final, that the time
allowed them was insufficient for proper revision, that they would give
an assurance that no increase would be made that would interfere with
trade or agriculture or diminish traffic and that, unless under
exceptional circumstances, no increase would in any case exceed 5 per
cent. But all was in vain, and Parliament passed an Act which provided
that any increase whatever (though within the limits of the new statutory
maximum) if complained of, should be heard and decided upon by the
Railway Commissioners, and that the onus of proving the reasonableness of
the increase should rest on the railway company. Sir Alexander (then
Mr.) Butterworth, in his book on _The Law Relating to Maximum Rates and
Charges on Railways_, published in 1897, says this remarkable result is
presented: that Parliament, "after probably the most protracted inquiry
ever held in connection with proposed legislation, decided that certain
amounts were to be the charges which railway companies should for the
future be entitled to make, and in 1894 apparently accepted the
suggestion that many of the charges, sanctioned after so much
deliberation, were unreasonable, and enacted that to entitle a company to
demand them, it should not be sufficient that the charge was within any
limit fixed by an Act of Parliament." Thus Parliament, yielding to
popular clamour, stultified itself, and in feverish haste to placate an
angry and noisy public tied the hands of the railway companies, doing, I
believe, more harm than good. This legislation naturally made the
companies very cautious in reducing a rate because of the difficulties to
be encountered should circumstances require them to raise it again, and
railway rates thus lost that element of elasticity and adaptability so
essential to the development of trade. Many a keen and enterprising
business man have I heard lament the restrictions that Parliament imposed
and declare that such interference with the freedom of trade was short-
sighted in the extreme and bad for the country.

Immediately after the passing of the Act of 1888 the railway companies
vigorously attacked the work imposed upon them. A special meeting on the
subject was held at the Irish Railway Clearing House in Dublin for the
purpose of preparing a revised Classification and Schedule of Rates. This
was a rare opportunity for me and I eagerly availed myself of it. Before
I left Glasgow it will be remembered I had been en