his purpose to take part payment in shares likely to return some £2 per cent., unless he compensated himself by unusually high profits; and this subsequent settlement of prices with one whose interests, like his own, are wrapped up in the prosecution of the undertaking, ensures him high profits. Meanwhile, it is noised abroad that all the capital has been subscribed and the line contracted for; these facts unduly raise the public estimate of the scheme; the shares are quoted at much above their true worth; unwary persons buy; the contractor from time to time parts with his moiety at fair prices; and the new shareholders ultimately find themselves part owners of a railway which, unprofitable as it originally promised to be, had been made yet more unprofitable by expensiveness of construction. Nor are these the only cases in which contractors gain after this fashion. They do the like with lines of their own projecting. To obtain Acts for these, they sign the subscription-contracts for large amounts; knowing that in the way above described, they can always make it answer to do this. So general had the practice latterly become, as to attract the attention of committees. As was remarked by a personage noted for his complicity in these transactions—“Committees are getting too knowing; they won’t stand that dodge now.” Nevertheless, the thing is still done under a disguised form. Though contractors no longer enter their own names on subscription lists for thousands of shares; yet they effect the same end by making nominal holders of their foremen and others: themselves being the real ones.