position of the Government in Belgium, which is responsible to the extent of 71 per cent. of the railway system in that country. The principles which have guided the Belgian Government in fixing railway rates appear from the extract from the report of the Debate to be found on page 115. At an interview which M. Vandenpeereboom, the Belgian Minister of Railways, Post and Telegraphs, was good enough to grant the writer, this was confirmed. Asked “what had been the object which the Government had in fixing the tariff; whether they had in view the obtaining of a fair interest on the outlay as a commercial undertaking, or whether the object was to develop the resources of the country, looking to a return on the outlay as a secondary consideration,” M. Vandenpeereboom replied “_that the object had been to develop the resources of the country_, and therefore a return on the capital was not of primary importance.” These fundamental differences cannot be disregarded; the fruits of systems so radically dissimilar cannot be expected to be the same. [112] “Monopoly” is at present the favourite word of the adversaries of railways; everything is permissible because railway companies have a “monopoly.” This word has at least three senses. Monopoly in the strict legal sense in which the Bank of England is guaranteed by statute, the exclusive right of issuing notes within a certain area; monopoly in the sense of being able to exclude other competitors, because in a commercial point of view there is no room for competition, or because the work could not be done more cheaply or better by others. Messrs. W. H. Smith may be said to possess a monopoly in this sense; monopoly is equivalent to property. No railway company possesses a monopoly in the first sense. No company is guaranteed against competition within any area, as many of them know to their cost. Most attacks against railways are justified by using the word, true in the second or third sense, as if true in the first; and persons in eminent positions occasionally condescend to sanction the use of this fallacy. If the State here, as in France, had provided without charging interest towards the capital expended upon the railways in this country, the same proportion as was so provided by the State in France (say upwards of £200,000,000), and guaranteed from 7 to 11 per cent. dividend on the remainder of the share capital; if it had, as in Holland, found three-fifths (£480,880,000) of the total sum expended on British railways, and accepted less than one per cent. interest upon the advance, the railway companies in this country could have afforded to carry at rates considerably lower than they now carry. It would not have been unreasonable in that case on the part of traders to have called on them to do so.