llowed in this Act was to build the
railway out of a Treasury grant, and after it had been built to hand it
over to one of the existing railway companies.

There are to-day 3,000 odd miles of railway in Ireland--a mileage
scarcely exceeding that of a single company, the Great Western Railway,
in England. They are owned by nearly thirty companies, each with a
separate staff of directors and salaried officials, the directors alone
being over 130 in number. The railways of the country are, without
exception, notoriously bad, the delay and dislocation incident to the
transfer of goods from one line to another, and the high rates which
prevail, inevitably serve to impede any traffic in goods, especially if
they are of a perishable character.

It is not traffic that makes communications, but cheap communications
that make traffic. The Belgian Government, fifty years ago, took over
the railways of that country, and reduced the freights to such a degree
that in eight years the quantity of goods carried was doubled, the
receipts of the railways were increased fifty per cent., and the profits
of the producers were multiplied five-fold. I am not quoting this
instance by way of plea that the present remedy for the grave economic
problems of Ireland lies in nationalisation of railways. I have said
enough to show the extravagance and irresponsibility of the present
Executive system, and in view of that no sane man would propose to endow
it with further powers than those which it already possesses; but let
me say this, that if the present state of diffusive impotence which
rules in the matter of transit in the country continues, some very
drastic remedies may before long have to be devised.

The cheapest freights for grain in the world are those between Chicago
and New York, and the reason why this is so is that there exists keen
competition on the part of the inland waterways. Of the 580 miles of
canals in Ireland a considerable part are owned by the railway
companies, and their weed-choked condition shows the use to which they
are put in the national economy.

Whoever it was that said the carriers of freight hold the keys of trade
was stating what appears almost an axiom, and an illustration is
afforded of the results of reduced rates in an analogous business in the
way in which the establishment of penny postage sent up the receipts of
the General Post Office.

The difference in the freights in the three kingdoms may be seen b