The prices of coal are low because of over production, and undue competition between colliery owners. The extravagant prices obtained by colliery proprietors in 1873-4 led to the opening of many new collieries in the South Wales, Northern and Midland districts of England, as well as in Germany and elsewhere. The result was to create a capacity of output far beyond the demand--160,000,000 tons per annum now as compared with 127,000,000 tons in 1873. The desire which exists in every district for reductions in railway rates is not so much to meet foreign, as home competition; the strength of that desire is ascribable to the activity and intensity of the latter competition. In regard to export trade, the inland producers of manufactured goods must be at a disadvantage as compared with their rivals on the sea coast. But no complaint that the railway companies had diverted traffic from England abroad by exorbitant rates was made out before the Railway Rates Committee. The Royal Commission on the Depression of Trade have heard much evidence to that effect, but they have not thought it necessary to call upon the railway companies for any reply. To very different causes--some of them far reaching and deep--is due the depression which interested persons would attribute on superficial grounds to the operation of rates. Upon the policies pursued by foreign Governments in regard to the construction and working of railways, it is unnecessary to pass any opinion. No trustworthy judgment is possible without fully considering all the circumstances--especially the difficulties to be encountered and the objects which the Governments had in view. It is enough to point out how radically different are the railway systems here and abroad--how much at variance are the policies pursued by our Government and by those of Continental States. Here the sole principle running through railway legislation has been to depend upon private enterprise, and to encourage competition between the companies.[112] Parliament has afforded no assistance to them, except indeed conferring the power to purchase, often on payment of exorbitant prices, the necessary land. Even when property of the State has been required by a railway company, the Government have, as a rule, been as exacting in their terms as any of the now maligned landowners, wholly different has been the policy of Governments abroad. Not only have railways been saved the payment of extravagant compensation or legal expenses in obtaining powers to construct the railways or acquire property, but inasmuch as the public in France did not, as in England, come forward to provide the necessary capital, the State supplied large portions of the capital of some railways, and contracted heavy obligations to promote the construction of others. In Germany, the State is responsible for the interest on the capital, the Government alone bearing any loss arising from charging low rates or otherwise. That also is the