[7] The late Member for West Wolverhampton, in comparing the rates for Coke between Staveley and Northamptonshire and Staveley and Wolverhampton, practically advocated mileage rates, although, probably, not intending to do so. (See debate on the second reading of the Railway and Canal Traffic Bill, May 6th, 1886.) [8] If an engine and tender weighing together 56 tons is capable of drawing a maximum load of say forty loaded wagons weighing 560 tons at 25 miles per hour on the level, it will only take the following loads over the gradients named below, and, in addition to the reduction in the load, the speed would also be considerably reduced. Level. 40 wagons weighing 560 tons. Incline 1 in 100 20 ” ” 280 ” ” 1 ” 50 10 ” ” 140 ” ” 1 ” 30 6 ” ” 84 ” See also Spon’s Dictionary of Engineering; Encyclopedia Britannica “Railways,” and the elaborate work _Des Pentes Economiques en Chemins, par M. Charles de Freycinet_. Equality is here not equity. To all railway companies the result of establishing a system of equal mileage rates would not be the same. Much would depend on the question whether the rates were the same over all parts of the same railway, or whether equal mileage rates were in force throughout the country: a distinction not always borne in mind by those who propose such rates. Undoubtedly to many railways the loss of traffic as the result, of equal mileage rates would be serious. Unless a very low scale of rates, entailing heavy and unnecessary loss, were adopted, much of the long distance traffic would cease to be carried. On other railways, however, the present net revenue might be maintained by levelling up rates; although the amount of traffic would be less, the working expenses might be reduced. On the whole, the more the theory of equal mileage rates is studied, the clearer it becomes that its adoption would probably be much less injurious to some railway companies than to colliery proprietors, manufacturers, traders, ports, and to the country at large.[9] [9] Before Mr. Cardwell’s Committee (23rd February, 1853) the late Mr. Robert Stephenson, the eminent engineer, gave the following illustration, which is not yet antiquated:--