In addition to this it might be that interest would have to be paid on two lots of railway capital in a district where the {284}traffic was sufficient to allow of the financial obligations of only a single company being efficiently met, any success achieved by the new company depending (until the available traffic increased) on its power to divert business and profits from the other company. Hence it might well occur that "the best laid schemes" of Parliament and Parliamentary Committees, in approving competitive lines, resulted only in the companies concerned coming to, at least, a friendly understanding; and it might even be that the public did not eventually benefit at all, because, as the Joint Committee of 1872 say, "The necessity of carrying interest on the additional capital required for the new line tends sometimes, in the end, to raise rather than to reduce the rates." Economic considerations, again, apart altogether from those monopolistic tendencies on the fear of which the policy of the State had been founded, were quite sufficient to account for the absorption of one company by another, and especially of small companies by larger ones, not so much to avoid competition as to ensure the provision of through routes operated under one and the same management, involving less outlay on working expenses, and providing greater advantages to the public than if the same length of line belonged to a number of different companies. The lines between London and Liverpool, for example, were originally divided between three companies, and the same was the case with the lines between Bristol and Leeds. In some instances the companies were not on good terms with one another, and they ran their trains to suit their own convenience. Even when they were on good terms, they might not have any interests in common, apart from (at one time) offering as few comforts and conveniences as possible to the third-class traveller, and compelling him at least to complete his journey by going first class, if he wished to get to his destination the same night. As early as 1847 attempts had been made by some of the companies to overcome the glaring defects of the original system of railway construction by establishing the Railway Clearing House, with a view to facilitating through traffic and allowing of a better adjustment of accounts when passengers or goods were carried over various lines in return for a {285}single payment. The companies persevered, however, in their further policy of amalgamation and consolidation, and in 1853 the number and magnitude of schemes with these objects in view created such alarm on the part both of politicians and of traders that a further Select Committee--known as Mr. Cardwell's Committee--was appointed.