Is it fair that anybody should pay anything at all for travelling on the railways? That is the question which must finally be considered, if Mr Francis' preliminary questions are to be entertained. Because some part of the capital of the shareholders may have been needlessly expended, they ought in this view to receive a less amount of interest for the remainder! The silliness of the above passage is so supreme--the ignorance which it displays of the first rules of law and equity, regarding property, is so profound, that it is hardly worth while exposing it. It betrays an obliquity of intellect of which we had not previously suspected even Mr Francis. Pray observe the exquisite serenity with which this important personage opens his case: "The question which is now proposed!" Proposed--and for whose consideration? Not surely for that of the Legislature, for the Legislature has already pronounced judgment. Are the public to take the matter in hand, and decide on the tables of rates? It would seem so. In that case, we might indeed calculate upon travelling cheap, provided the rails were not shut up. But the whole of his remarks are as practically absurd as they are mischievous in doctrine. What right has Jack, Tom, or Harry to question the cost of his conveyance? Are there not, in all conscience, competing lines enough, independent altogether of Parliamentary regulations, to secure the public against being overcharged on the railways? On what authority does Mr Francis assume that a single acre of the land was paid for at an unjust rate? Mr Robert Stephenson's estimate, we take it, has not the authority of gospel. No engineer's estimate has. Their margin is always a large one; and it almost never happens that, when the works are completed, their actual cost is found to correspond with the hypothetical calculation. But the truth is, that the value paid for the land taken by railways is the only item of expense which cannot be justly challenged. The reason is plain. A railway company has in the first instance to prove the preamble of its bill--that is, it must show to the satisfaction of the Legislature that the construction of the work will be attended with public and local advantages. The settlement of the money question, regarding the value of the land, is reserved for the legal tribunals of the country. To complain of the verdicts given is to impugn the course of justice, and to cast discredit on the system of jury trial. Very wisely was it determined that such questions should be so adjudicated, because no reasonable ground of complaint can be left to either party. The decision as to the value of the land, and the amount of compensation which is due, is taken from the hands both of Ahab and Naboth, and their respective engineers and valuators, and intrusted to neutral parties, whose duty it is to see fair play between them.