It is interesting now, when, owing to the war, the railways of the land are under temporary Government control, and their future all uncertain, to remember that, on the Statute Book to-day, there is an Act which provides for State purchase of the railways of the country. Whether a solution of the difficulty will be found in State purchase or in State control it is hard to say, but it is clear that some solution of the problem will become imperative when the war is ended and normal conditions return. Justice and reason demand it. In the year 1845 three long Acts of Parliament came into force; the _Companies Clauses_, the _Lands Clauses_ and the _Railway Clauses Acts_. Between them they contained no less than 483 sections. Each Act was a consolidating measure. The first contained provisions usually inserted in Acts for the constitution of public companies, the second the same in regard to the taking of land compulsorily, and the third consolidated in one general statute provisions usually introduced into Acts of Parliament authorising the construction of railways. The _Railway Clauses Act_ authorised railway companies to use locomotive engines, carriages and wagons; to carry passengers and goods, and to make reasonable charges not exceeding the tolls authorised by their special Acts. Since then the whole of the trade of transit by rail has been conducted by the companies owning the lines. The gauge of railways in Great Britain was not fixed upon any scientific principle. At first it followed the width of the coal tram-roads in the north of England, which was adopted simply on account of its practical convenience (five feet being the usual width of the gates through which the "way-leaves" led) and so four feet eight and a-half inches became the ordinary gauge, but in the early days it was by no means the universal gauge. Five feet was chosen for the Eastern Counties Railway; seven feet for the Great Western and five feet six was used in Scotland. The Ulster Company in Ireland made twenty-five miles of the line from Belfast to Dublin on a gauge of six feet two, while the Drogheda Company, which set out from Dublin to meet the Ulster line, adopted five feet two. When the Ulster Company complained of this, the Irish Board of Works, it is said, admitted that it was a little awkward, but added that, as it was not likely the intervening part would ever be made, it did not much matter. The subject was, I believe, in Ireland referred to a General Pasley, who consulted the authorities (who were many) throughout the kingdom. He ultimately solved the question by adding up the various gauges the authorities favoured, and recommended the mean, which was five feet three inches; and so, for Ireland, five feet three became the standard gauge.