diminishing quantity, and that it is only the fall during recent years in the value of materials, especially of coal, and other favourable circumstances, that have enabled the principal companies to fairly maintain their dividends; while if the present conditions with regard to passenger traffic remain unaltered, and there should be any material rise in prices of stores, or loss upon the working of the goods traffic by reason of bad trade, or if there should be any considerable reductions of the Parliamentary powers of the companies, which are now undergoing revision at the hands of the Board of Trade in conformity with the Railway and Canal Traffic Act of last Session, then the outlook for railway shareholders would be a serious one for them to contemplate.
There seems to be no reason to doubt that the state of things thus described, so unfavourable from the railway shareholders' point of view, has been brought about chiefly by reason of the lengths to which the companies have gradually proceeded, under the pressure of competition, in making concessions without adequate remuneration for the privileges bestowed. These concessions have certainly been very great, and they have had the effect of placing railway travellers in Great Britain in an extremely favoured position as compared with the public who use the Continental railways, since there need be no hesitation in saying that although the methods of working in France, Belgium, Germany, and Austria may be sufficiently well adapted to the circumstances of those countries respectively, they are not such as would commend themselves to the British public. On most Continental railways the express trains carry, as a rule, only first and second class passengers, and the fastest trains travel, on an average, ten miles an hour less than the
