If, argued Morrison, after one company had spent a large sum on a line to Liverpool, another company were encouraged to spend as much again, with a view to providing a competition which would keep down the charges, the two would inevitably arrive at some understanding by which the original charges would be confirmed; and the Legislature, he contended--though the Legislature never acted on his contention--was "bound to prevent, as far as it could, the unnecessary waste of capital" on the building of unnecessary lines to promote a competition he held to be futile. The safeguarding of the public interests could, he thought, be effected in another way. {261}"The history of the existing canals, waterworks, etc., afforded," he went on, "abundant evidence of the evils" of allowing too much freedom in the matter of rates; and he quoted the high prices at which the shares of the Loughborough Canal and the Trent and Mersey Canal were then still being sold,[40] adding: "The possession of the best, or, it may be, the only practicable line, and the vast capital required for the formation of new canals, have enabled the associations in question, unchecked by competition, to maintain rates of charges which have realised enormous profits for a long series of years." The remedy he recommended in preference to competition was that when Parliament established companies for the formation of canals or railroads it should invariably reserve to itself the power to make such periodical revisions of the rates and charges as it might deem expedient, examining into the whole management and affairs of each company, and fixing the rates and charges for another term; the period he favoured being one of twenty years.[41] There was no suggestion, at this time, that the railway companies _had_ abused their powers. The only suggestion--and expectation--was that _because_ the canal companies had abused theirs, the railway companies might, and doubtless would, do the same, unless they were prevented; and it will {262}be found that this was mainly the position throughout the whole of the subsequent controversies. Morrison's proposal was approved in the House of Commons, and on May 17 he brought in a Bill for giving effect to it in regard to all new railways, to be sanctioned in that or any subsequent Session. But the prospect of a Parliamentary limitation of the profits a railway might earn had a most depressing effect on the railway interests, and on July 11 Sir Robert Peel urged that the question should be decided without further delay inasmuch as "this branch of commercial enterprise was injured and almost paralysed." On the following day the Bill was brought up again, and it was then defeated.