interests meriting attention.[3] How often do witnesses before Royal Commissions or in Parliamentary inquiries merely deprecate in general language what they object to as personally injurious, or merely claim what would be advantageous for themselves! How often is their proposal of reform merely a thinly veiled plan for securing _protection_ against competition for some industry or some town or port! How many proposals as to rates, propounded with facility and confidence in Chambers of Commerce, would prove to be valueless or even objectionable if their authors were always obliged to answer in detail two questions. What would be the effect of the proposals on consumers? How would they affect producers and traders generally? [3] Gustav Cohn, the well known German writer on English railways, while advocating many changes, complains of the limited, one-sided knowledge of the subject shown by the chief English critics of railways.--_Die Englische Eisenbahnpolitik_ (1883), p.88 and elsewhere. SECTION III. COST OF SERVICE. One favourite proposal, often refuted but constantly renewed, is to base rates on the actual cost of conveyance _plus_ a reasonable return on the capital invested. Whether this would benefit the trade of the country we shall by and by consider. But it is no light presumption against this principle that, though so often proposed, especially by theorists, nowhere has it been carried out. Obviously cost of conveyance bears no relation to value of goods--the mere transit of some descriptions of very valuable goods costs as little as that of low priced articles. It will be generally found that when pressed, the advocates of this theory are not prepared to maintain that for a cwt. of coals and a cwt. of copper the charge should be the same. They shrink from the application of their own principle, recognising, as is the fact, that it is absolutely inconsistent with any classification of goods, such as traders and the Board of Trade have been urging the companies to adopt.