Many of the general Acts have been framed upon the recommendations of various Select Committees and Royal and Vice-Regal Commissions, which have been appointed from time to time since railways began.  From 1835 down to the present year of 1918 some score or more of these Committees and Commissions have gravely sat and issued their more or less wise and weighty reports.

What are these numerous Acts of Parliament and what are their objects, scope, and intentions?

Whilst neither time nor space admit of detailed exposition, not to speak of the patience of my readers, a few observations upon some of the principal enactments may not be inapposite or uninteresting.

Pride of place belongs to the Carriers’ Act of 1830, passed in the reign of William IV., five years after the first public railway (the Stockton and Darlington) was opened.  This Act, although in it the word railway does not appear, is an important Act to railway companies, and possesses the singular and uncommon merit of having been framed for the protection of Common Carriers.  It is intituled “An Act for the more effectual Protection of Mail Contractors, Stage Coach Proprietors, and other Common Carriers for Hire, against the Loss or Injury to Parcels or Packages delivered to them for Conveyance or Custody, the Value and Contents of which shall not be Declared to them by the Owners thereof.”  The draughtsman of this dignified little Act it is clear was greatly addicted to capitals.  Probably he thought they heightened effect, much as Charles Lamb spelt plum pudding with a b—­“plumb pudding,” because, he said, “it reads fatter and more suetty.”  At the time this Act came into being, railways in the eye of Parliament were public highways, upon which you or I, if we paid the prescribed tolls, could convey our traffic, our vehicles, or ourselves.  In the years 1838-1840 many of the companies obtained powers enabling them to act as public carriers; and in 1840 questions having arisen in Parliament as to the rights of the public in this respect the subject was referred to a Select Committee of the House of Commons.  The Committee’s report disposed of the view which, until then, Parliament had held, and expressed the opinion that the right of persons to run their own engines and carriages was a dead letter for the good reason, amongst others, that it was necessary for railway trains to be run and controlled by and under one complete undivided authority.

After the Carriers’ Act, which applied to all carriers as well as to railways, the first general railway Act of importance was the Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act of 1838.  This Act enabled the Postmaster-General to require railway companies to convey mails by all trains and to provide sorting carriages when necessary, the Royal Arms to be painted on such carriages, and in 1844, under the Railway Regulation Act, it was further enacted that the Postmaster-General could require, for the conveyance of mails, that trains should be run at any rate of speed, certified to be safe, but not to exceed 27 miles an hour!