It is not to be expected that the accumulation of such individual actions should leave the legislative policy unchanged. Hence the fact, that the influence once used to throw out railway bills is now used to carry them. Hence the fact, that railway committees no longer require a good traffic case to be made out in justification for the powers asked. Hence the fact, that railway directors having seats in the House of Commons, are induced to pledge their companies to carry out extensions. We could name a member of Parliament who, having bought an estate fitly situated, offered to an engineer, also in Parliament, the making of a railway running through it; and having obtained the Act (in doing which the influence of himself and his friend was of course useful), pitted three railway companies against each other for the purchase of it. We could name another member of Parliament who, having projected and obtained powers for an extension through his property, induced the directors of the main line, with whom he had great influence, to subscribe half the capital for his extension, to work it for fifty per cent. of the gross receipts, and to give up all traffic brought by it on to the main line until he received four per cent. on his capital; which was tantamount to a four per cent. guarantee. But it is not only, nor indeed mainly, from directly personal motives that legislators have of late years unduly fostered railway enterprises. Indirectly personal motives of various kinds have been largely operative. The wish to satisfy constituents has been one. Inhabitants of an unaccommodated district, are naturally urgent with their representatives to help them to a line. Not unfrequently such representatives are conscious that their next elections may perhaps turn upon their successful response to this appeal. Even when there is no popular pressure there is the pressure of their leading political supporters—of large landholders whom it will not do to neglect; of local lawyers, important as electioneering friends, to whom a railway always brings {67} business. Thus, without having immediately private ends, members of Parliament are often almost coerced into urging forward schemes which, from a national point of view, or from a shareholder’s point of view, are very unwise ones. Then there come the still less direct stimuli. Where neither personal nor political ends are to be gained, there are still the interests of a relative to be subserved; or, if not those of a relative, still those of a friend. And where there is no decided impulse to the contrary, these motives, of course, have their weight. Moreover, it requires in fairness to be said, that possessed as most members of Parliament are, with the belief that all railway-making is nationally beneficial, there exist in their minds few or no reasons for resisting the influences brought to bear on them. True, shareholders may be injured; but that is their own affair.