world comes out with railway schemes. It is opposition which engenders expense; and a mania is the hotbed for the raising of opposition. One of our railway companies had to fight so hard for their bill, that they found, when at length they reached the last stage--namely, that of receiving the royal assent--that their parliamentary expenses had mounted up to half a million of money. Half a million of money spent in barely acquiring from parliament the _right_ of making a line of railway which is to confer a benefit on the nation! Such is the fact. Without opposition, the same bill would have been passed into an act at a cost not worth naming by the side of that enormous sum.' The result of all this was, that the cost of constructing railways went far beyond what was warranted by prospects of traffic; and in point of fact, had the traffic not turned out to be greater than was contemplated by the projectors, scarcely a railway in the country would ever have paid a shilling of profit. The usual expense of construction and putting in working order--all outlays included--was L.30,000 to L.40,000 per mile; some lines were executed at L.20,000 per mile; but in several instances the cost was as high as L.300,000 per mile. The mere parliamentary expenses of some lines were L.5000 per mile; and a railway got well off at L.1000 per mile for expenses of this nature. But the primary cost of railways is only one element of calculation as respects the chances of profit: another large item is the expense of working. It is now discovered that a railway cannot be worked, to be at all efficient, under the present heavy locomotive system, at a less cost than L.700 per mile per annum. 'Several branch lines owned by wealthy companies,' says Herapath, 'do not receive more than L.500 per mile per annum, while the expense of working them cannot be less than L.700 per mile per annum. Here the loss is L.200 per mile per annum in addition to the loss of the capital expended' for construction. 'The [present] locomotive railway system is of too costly a character to admit of every town having its railway. It is too costly in _working_ as well as in _construction_. A vast number of places have not traffic sufficient to support railways, though the capital cost of them should be nothing. The working of trains is too expensive to allow of any profit being derived from the traffic conveyed.'