ved, but the
committee nevertheless allowed the bill to proceed. It was read a second
time and then went into committee, by whom it was under consideration for
sixty-three days; and ultimately Parliament was prorogued before the
report could be made. Such were the delays and consequent expenses which
the forms of the House occasioned in this case, that it may be doubted if
the ultimate cost of constructing the whole line was very much more than
was expended in obtaining permission from Parliament to make it. This
example serves to show the expensive formalities, the delays, and
difficulties, with which Parliament surround railway legislation.
Another instance, quoted by the same authority, will show not only the
absurdity of the system of legislation, but also the afflicting spirit of
competition and opposition with which railway bills are canvassed in
Parliament, and the expensive outlay incurred by companies themselves.

"In 1845, a bill for a line now existing went before Parliament with
eighteen competitors, each party relying on the wisdom of Parliament to
allow their bill at least to pass a second reading! Nineteen different
parties condemned to one scene of contentious litigation! They each and
all had to pay not only the costs of promoting their own line, but also
the costs of opposing eighteen other bills. And yet conscious as
government must have been of this fact, Parliament deliberately abandoned
the only step it ever took on any occasion of subjecting railway projects
to investigation by a preliminary tribunal. Parliamentary committees
generally satisfied themselves with looking on and watching the ruinous
game of competition for which the public are ultimately to pay. In fact,
railway legislation became a mere scramble, conducted on no system or
principle. Schemes of sound character were allowed to be defeated on
merely technical grounds, and others of very inferior character were
sanctioned by public act, after enormous Parliamentary expenses had been
incurred. Competing lines were granted, sometimes parallel lines through
the same district, and between the same towns."

AN EXPENSIVE PARLIAMENTARY BILL.

A writer in the _Popular Encyclopaedia_ observes:--"But the most
conspicuous example in recent times, which overshadowed all others, of
excessive expenditure in Parliamentary litigation as well as in land and
compensation, is supplied in the history of the Great Northern Company.
The p