To this list, some seven or eight of the Company’s tradesmen, similarly armed, might be added; raising the number of the almost factitious shares held by functionaries to about 5200, and increasing the votes commanded by them, from its present total of 1068 to upwards of 1100. If now we separate the £380,000, which these gentlemen bring to bear against their brother shareholders, into real and nominal; we find that while not quite £120,000 of it is _bonâ fide_ property invested, the remaining £260,000 is nine {82} parts shadow and one part substance. And thus it results, that by virtue of certain stock actually representing but £26,000, these lawyers, engineers, counsel, conveyancers, contractors, bankers, and others interested in the promotion of new schemes, outweigh more than a quarter of a million of the real capital held by shareholders whom these schemes will injure! * * * * * Need we any longer wonder, then, at the persistence of Railway Companies in seemingly reckless competition and ruinous extensions? Is not this obstinate continuance of a policy that has year after year proved disastrous, sufficiently explicable on contemplating the many illegitimate influences at work? Is it not manifest that the small organized party always out-manœuvres the large unorganized one? Consider their respective characters and circumstances. Here are the shareholders diffused throughout the kingdom, in towns and country houses; knowing nothing of each other, and too remote to co-operate were they acquainted. Very few of them see a railway journal; and scarcely any know much of railway politics. Necessarily a fluctuating body, only a small number are familiar with the Company’s history—its acts, engagements, policy, management. A great proportion are incompetent to judge of the matters that come before them, and lack decision to act out such judgments as they may form—executors who do not like to take steps involving much responsibility; trustees fearful of interfering with the property under their care, lest possible loss should entail a lawsuit; widows who have never in their lives acted for themselves in any affair of moment; maiden ladies, alike nervous and innocent of all business knowledge; clergymen whose daily discipline has been little calculated to make them acute men of the world; retired tradesmen whose retail transactions have given them small ability for grasping large considerations; servants possessed of {83} accumulated savings and cramped notions; with sundry others of like helpless characters—all of them rendered more or less conservative by ignorance or timidity, and proportionately inclined to support those in authority. To these should be added the temporary shareholders, who, having bought stock on speculation, and knowing that a revolution in the Company is likely to depress prices for a time, have an interest in supporting the board irrespective of the goodness of its policy. Turn