As it is clear that the present management of the Irish railways is materially obstructing the prosperity of that part of the United Kingdom, the question of how the obstruction is most effectually to be removed has come to be one of great public importance, and numerous expedients have been proposed for solution of the difficulty. All the English railway managers who gave evidence on the subject before the recent Commission were agreed as to one point, namely, the necessity for greater consolidation in the management of the Irish lines. Mr. Cawkwell recommended that they should be amalgamated into four sections; Mr. Allport, that they should be amalgamated into three; while Mr. Bidder held that one uniform management would be the best. One consolidated company would not by any means be too large for effective management. Indeed, all the Irish lines combined amount to little more in length than several of the larger English railways, while their combined annual income is very much less. The gross receipts of the London and North-Western Company are four times greater; those of the North-Eastern and Great Western more than double; while the Midland, the Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the Great Northern, each earn considerably more money than all the Irish companies. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that the whole traffic receipts of Ireland are less than those of the Great Eastern Railway, which runs through an almost purely agricultural district.

As the testimony is uniform as to the advantages derived by the public from consolidation of railway interests in England, it seems clear that similar results would follow the consolidation of the Irish companies. Rivalry, jealousy, and competition, would be put an end to, and an immense saving be at once effected in working expenses. A large number of useless boards of directors would be abolished, with their separate auditors, secretaries, engineers, and general managers. There are 333 Irish railway directors, 70 auditors, 35 secretaries, and 13 general managers, all of whose functions would be much more satisfactorily performed by an efficient executive sitting in Dublin. But as the authority of Parliament would be required to enable a general consolidation of the Irish companies to be carried out, a further important question has been raised in the course of this discussion, namely, whether the railways of Ireland should not cease to be the property of private individuals, and become the property of the State, and be worked, as they have been with so much success in Belgium and Germany, for the sole benefit of the public.

Had the proposal made to Parliament by Lord George Bentinck

Bentinck in 1847-that Government should undertake the construction of Irish railways in conjunction with private capitalists -been carried into effect, it would probably have proved one of the greatest boons ever conferred upon Ireland; but it has been the misfortune of that country to be made the battle-ground of party, and the proposal was defeated. More fortunately for India, party combinations did not stand in the way of a policy similar to that recommended by Lord George Bentinck for Ireland being adopted in that dependency; and the native Hindoo is now, with the help of British capital guaranteed by the British Government, enabled to travel a hundred miles for 2s., while the poor Irishman must pay four times the price for the like service. It is not, however, too late to remedy the evils occasioned by the present chaotic and unnational Irish system. The railway companies are in too distressed circumstances to stand out for high terms. Two of them are bankrupt; two are at a standstill; six have paid no dividend on their preference stocks for three years; ten have paid no dividend on their ordinary shares; two pay less than one per cent.; five pay less than the funds; six only have paid more than the funds, but less than the ordinary rate of commercial interest; while, with one exception, that of a line near Dublin, six miles in length, all the shares are below par.

Mr. Dargan, a competent judge, estimated the present value of Irish railway property at 22,000,0007., or less than one year's expenditure on our Army and Navy. For this amount the whole of the Irish lines might be purchased, by the creation of a Government Stock at 3 per cent., the interest on which would be less, by 157,000l., than the net receipts of 1865. Mr. Stewart expressed an opinion before the Commission that the whole working expenses of railways in the United Kingdom might easily be reduced 10 per cent. without diminishing the convenience or service of the public. If this be the case with the United Kingdom, the reduction for Ireland would probably not amount to less than 15 per cent. But allowing for a reduction of only 10 per cent., the balance at the disposal of the Government would be about 330,000l. per annum, which might be applied, first to the reduction of rates and fares, and next to the extension of railways into districts not yet provided with them. The lines might either be worked directly by a Government staff, as in Belgium, or the working might be leased to a company, with conditions for affording every possible facility to the public, and subject to low rates for passengers, cattle, merchandise, coal, and minerals. But the working of the lines is a mere matter of detail, and could be arranged without difficulty were

the

the important principle once definitively affirmed, that it is to the interest of the public that the State should become the owner of the national highways in lieu of the private companies. Even though this principle might not be accepted as regards England, it may be held, as it has been held, that Ireland, like India, forms an exceptional case; that we have, indeed, already made Ireland an exception to our usual policy by supporting Irish railways with Government money, though we have gone to work in the wrong way; and that the time has at length arrived for correcting past errors, and assuming the proprietorship of the Irish railways, on the grounds of enlightened public policy.

No such recommendation has, however, been made by the Royal Commission of 1865. Their report, though containing much interesting information as to the history of railway enterprise, and full of details as to the working of railways, is on the whole very disappointing as to the measures recommended for the improvement of the railway system. The strongest thing in the Report is the large Egyptian type in which sundry recommendations are printed-in imitation of the style of Mr. Reade the novelist, when he makes his characters speak loud-though, for anything of force which they contain, they might as well have been set in the smallest nonpareil. The two supplemental reports of Mr. Monsell and Sir Rowland Hill are much more valuable, and are especially worthy of consideration. The former, in support of the policy of Government assuming the proprietorship of the Irish railways, has not yet been answered, and indeed is unanswerable. That of Sir Rowland Hill is a Report for the future, worthy of the author of the Cheap Postage System.' In brief, he sets forth that experience has shown that railways are essentially monopolies; consequently, that they are not suitable objects for ordinary commercial enterprise; that they cannot be left advantageously to independent companies, who, of course, manage them with exclusive reference to their own interests; but that they should be in the hands of those who will control their management with a view to the interests of the country at large, that is to say, in the hands of the Government.

Into this large and important question we cannot now enter; but we shall be surprised if the views which Sir Rowland Hill sets forth with so much point and vigour do not meet with increased and increasing acceptance by the public. The readiness with which Parliament recently empowered the purchase of the telegraphic lines by the State-a measure which would not have been deemed practicable five years ago-shows how rapidly public opinion ripens under admitted practical grievances. And though it might be deemed impracticable at the present time to

carry

Lady Minto's Memoir of the Right Hon. Hugh Elliot. 329

carry a measure through Parliament for the like purchase of British railways, there can be no doubt that opinion is travelling rapidly in that direction, and that it has been not a little accelerated of late by the sudden great increase of fares on some of the metropolitan lines. When railways were originally authorised, private interests were compelled to give way to the public good; and if it should appear, after the experience of forty years, that the private interests of the proprietors of railways are incompatible with cheap locomotion and the proper accommodation of the public, private interests must again give way; and then it may be deemed expedient, in the interests of society, that the State-which is but Society organised-shall resume possession, and become the owners and controllers as in former times, of the great highways of the kingdom.

ART. II.-A Memoir of the Right Hon. Hugh Elliot. By the Countess of Minto. Edinburgh, 1868.

WE

E should be sorry to chill the hopes or cloud the prospects of a distinguished and popular class of public servants, but we are afraid that diplomacy has seen its best days; and that if steam, electricity, and responsible government have not proved its ruin, they are rapidly accelerating its decline. An ambassador at a corrupt or despotic Court, several days' or weeks' journey from his own country, had ample scope for the display of tact, insight into character, knowledge of affairs, and even statesmanship. He had to deal with favourites, as well as with ministers of state. He had to humour caprices, and watch for happy moments-the mollia tempora fandi-as well as to draw up protocols or dictate despatches. Instead of telegraphing for instructions, he was obliged to act upon his own judgment and responsibility on the spur of the occasion, when haply the fate of kingdoms depended on the success or failure of an intrigue. It was a mistress, Madame de Pompadour, irritated by some contemptuous expressions imprudently let drop by Frederic the Great, that induced France to join the combination against him in the Seven Years' War; and many similar instances might be adduced in favour of Voltaire's well-known theory of causation in history-that great events are brought about by small things. When empires were ruled by loose or capricious women, there were no bounds to the influence which an accomplished and quick-witted man of the world might exercise; and prior to the French Revolution a Court or Government con

trolled

trolled by reason, or anything that could be called policy, was rather the exception than the rule. Many men, in all nations, long for peace,' says Carlyle, speaking of 1759; but there are Three Women at the top of the world who do not; their wrath, various in quality, is great in quantity, and disasters do the reverse of appeasing.' These three women were Elizabeth of Russia, Maria Theresa, and Madame Pompadour.

6

Ah, my friend! [writes Madame du Barri] who would have told me in my fifteenth year that the day would come when I should be obliged to mix diplomacy with every action of my life? There were moments when, dismissing the anxieties caused me by these trickeries, I burst out laughing to think that I was directing the most important interests in concert with foreign ambassadors and ministers. Behold me surrounded by the Pope's Nuncio, Monseignor Giraud, Archbishop of Damas; the Count of Marcy Argenteau, Austrian Ambassador; the English Ambassador, Viscount Stormont; M. de Moncenigo; and all the other great and petty members of the diplomatic body. How sly I was with that Moncenigo, who was sly in everything. How reserved I was with Lord Stormont, who phlegmatically tried to win me over to the interests of England. He was eternally hanging about me. could not guess the reason of his tiresome assiduity. At last, one fine day, he told me that his Court desired to give me proofs of its goodwill, that it contemplated offering me an annual present worthy of it and me. "My Lord," I replied, in a severe tone, "the woman whom the King of France honours with his friendship is rich enough to make presents, and esteems herself sufficiently to receive none!"

A pupil in the Chesterfield school would have avoided such a blunder, and this was the school in which the most renowned diplomatists of the eighteenth century were brought up. The Prince de Broglie, who dates (and, we think, a little antedates) the subversive change in diplomacy from the French Revolution, speaks thus of its professors or practitioners prior to 1789:

Their memory was a gallery of living portraits, and their conversation, studded over with the most august names, but marked by a discreet malignity, resembled that which is often carried on in the vestibule about the habitués of the château. There is nothing offensive in such a comparison. During a régime under which kings represented the entire State, faithful domestic service without meanness was a natural form of patriotism. A large portion of their wandering lives was also spent in the pursuit of sensuality and elegance, in sumptuous fêtes, where they were hosts and guests by turns, wherever they pitched their tents. They gave the signal for pleasure. Strange pastime, it will be said, for the depositaries of the destinies of nations. But this judgment would be as superficial as pedantic; for if their policy was frivolous, their frivolity was still oftener political. These diversions were but an occasion for encountering on the pacific territory of a salon, in the midst of songs, flowers, and festivity, the rival of the eve

become