As I have said, the Select Committee of 1840 reported against the right of the public to run their own engines and carriages on railways.  They made recommendations which led to the passing of the Railway Regulation Act of that year, and in that Act powers were, for the first time, conferred upon the Board of Trade in connection with railways.  It was the beginning of that authority, which since has greatly grown, but which the Board of Trade have in the main exercised with an impartiality, which public authorities do not always display.  The Act empowered the Board, before any new railway was opened, to require notice from the railway company.  This power was repealed by an Act of 1842, and larger powers granted in its place, including the right to compel the inspection of such railways before being opened for traffic.  The Act of 1840 also required the companies, under penalty, to furnish to the Board of Trade returns of traffic, as well as of all accidents attended with personal injury; and to submit their bye-laws for certification.

Of the railway mania period I have spoken in a previous chapter.  For a time enormous success attended some of the lines.  Amongst others the Liverpool and Manchester and the Stockton and Darlington enjoyed mouth watering dividends; the former ten, the latter fifteen per cent.!  Said the Government to themselves, “’Tis time we saw to this,” and accordingly they passed the Railway Regulation Act of 1844.  This Act provided that if at any time, after twenty-one years, the dividend of any railway should exceed ten per cent., the Treasury might revise the rates and fares so as to reduce the profits to not more than ten per cent.  This expectation of high dividends, I need hardly say, has not been realised, and the Act in this respect has been a dead letter.  The Act also conferred an option on the Treasury to acquire future railways at twenty-five years purchase of the annual profits; or, if such profits were less than ten per cent., the price was to be left to arbitration.

It is interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain, to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which provides for State purchase of the railways of the country.  Whether a solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State control it is hard to say, but it is clear that some solution of the problem will become imperative when the war is ended and normal conditions return.  Justice and reason demand it.

In the year 1845 three long Acts of Parliament came into force; the Companies Clauses, the Lands Clauses and the Railway Clauses Acts.  Between them they contained no less than 483 sections.  Each Act was a consolidating measure.  The first contained provisions usually inserted in Acts for the constitution of public companies, the second the same in regard to the taking of land compulsorily, and the third consolidated in one general statute provisions usually introduced into Acts of Parliament authorising the construction of railways.