The case of telegraphs is not so clear. Probably, on the whole, the advantages of a uniform State management preponderate, but there are drawbacks which make it doubtful. Even at a sixpenny rate a great deal of the telegraphic communication of the large towns and active centres of business is taxed to make up for the deficiency of the rest of the kingdom. And invention and improvement in telegraphy are no doubt checked to a considerable extent by creating a State monopoly whose first duty it is to try to satisfy its masters at the Treasury by making the system pay. When we come to railways we are on debateable ground, and it is fairly arguable that they should be worked by the State for the public good. But the objections here outweigh the advantages. Every one who has any practical experience of the working of railways must be aware that the simplicity and uniformity of the penny postal system are totally inapplicable, and that the traffic of the country requires, above all things, great freedom and elasticity in meeting, day by day, the varying contingencies which arise. Here is an illustration: In a certain town in France, on a railway worked by the State, it was determined to have a _fête_ in order to raise funds for a hospital, and, as an attraction, to bring down from Paris a small troop of actors and have a play in the evening. The question turned on the railway consenting to give them a reduced fare for the return journey. The manager of the railway was quite willing, but said that he had no power to alter the tariff without permission from the Minister of Public Works. The permission was applied for, and the result was that it arrived exactly on the day twelve months after the _fête_ had been held. Contrast this with the case of the general manager of the London and North Western Railway sitting in his office at Euston and receiving half a dozen telegrams asking him to quote special rates, one perhaps for beef from Chicago to London, another for emigrants from Hamburg to New York _via_ Liverpool, and all requiring telegraphic answers then and there, if the business is to be done at all. Again, if railways had been in the hands of the State, I do not suppose that we should have had half our present mileage; for the Treasury would never have sanctioned the outlay of public money on lines which could not show the prospect of a fair return on the capital, and it would have vetoed any multiplication of trains or reduction of rates which threatened loss to the exchequer. I can speak with some authority on this point, for I have been both Chairman of a railway company and Secretary of the Treasury, and I am certain that, in the former capacity, I have introduced important innovations, such as excursion trains and cheap periodical tickets, by which the public have greatly benefited, which I should have vetoed in the latter capacity.