Calcutta Review Volume 2; V. 84-85

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1887 Excerpt: ... may be as well to go briefly over some of Mr. Grierson's views. His main thesis is laid down in his first chapter, viz., that railway administrations (in England) need be apprehensive only, of a vague uninstructed notion that something must be done; of legislation adopted, if not in a panic, in a time of greatly depressed trade, of crude one-sided proposals and of the application of a standard of perfection supposed 11 to exist somewhere, but in truth nowhere realized. This is not improbably an accurate sketch of a good deal of the present movement, but the author knows well that the world is governed somehow with an uncommonly small amount of wisdom and fools step in, and hold on, too, on ground which the angels won't look at, and he therefore proceeds to go carefully over the whole field of dispute, demolishing each objection and arriving practically at the comforting conclusion, that everything that is, is good, and that railway managers, at any rate, know their own business. The first point to bear in mind, and one which singularly enough seems to be generally overlooked, is that railways regarded simply as commercial investments, must pay their way, or if this very necessary result is to be endangered, that the State must be prepared to acquire their property on equitable terms. The railways in the United Kingdom can urge, at any rate, that in spite of their monopolies and their excessive rates, they have as yet on the average paid no extraordinary dividends. Their average receipts for the last dozen years has not been 4j per cent, and on 48 millions of the ordinary capital as pointed out by Mr. Grierson, no dividend at all is forthcoming; while the Company he is connected with, the Great Western, one of the largest and most powerful in ...