and it might further have followed from this cause that, a kind of public sanction having been given to particular lines and localities, much of that personal opposition which has thrown difficulties in the way of works of great and acknowledged utility would never have been brought forward." In making these remarks, Porter was only giving expression to views entertained in various influential quarters, and to a certain extent he did but anticipate, or re-echo, according to the precise date at which his observations had been {268}written, certain views and proposals put forward by the Select Committee of 1844, of which Mr Gladstone (then President of the Board of Trade) was chairman. In the Fifth Report of this Committee it is said:-- "The Committee entertain very strongly the opinion that in the future proceedings of Parliament railway schemes ought not to be regarded as merely projects of local improvement, but that each new line should be viewed as a member of a great system of communication, binding together the various districts of the country with a closeness and intimacy of relation in many respects heretofore unknown." So long, the Report continued, as railways were considered to be of problematical benefit, and were in general subject to extensive opposition on the part of the owners and occupiers of land, and of the inhabitants of the districts they traversed, there might have been reasons for ensuring a very full, and, in some points of view, a disproportionately full, representation to local interests; but "The considerations which tend to attach to railways a national rather than a local character gain weight from year to year as those undertakings are progressively consolidated among themselves, as the points of contact between them are multiplied, and as those that were first isolated in comparison are thus brought into relation with gradually extending ranges of space, traffic and population." The Select Committee went on to give their reasons for considering that the ordinary machinery of Private Bill Committees, with their separate and unconnected proceedings, and an individual existence commencing and ending with each particular Bill, was inadequate and unsatisfactory; and they especially pointed to the fact that hitherto it had not been customary to examine railway Bills "systematically and at large with reference to public interests." There were various questions which could not be thoroughly sifted under the mode of procedure then in vogue, and the Committee recommended that, with a view to assisting the judgment of the Houses of the Legislature, all future railway Bills should, previously to coming before Parliament, be submitted to the Board of Trade for their report thereon. They further said--and these observations have a special significance in view of events that were to follow:--