stated by the present board of directors at 10 per cent. higher than those we now publish, but we believe that these latter approach the nearer to correctness of the two. _Statement of Working Expenses on Receipts, for the eighteen months ending 30th June, 1867._ NAME OF COMPANY. Rate per cent. London and North-Western 46·63 North-Eastern 48·05 Great Western 48·65 Midland 47·26 Lancashire and Yorkshire 44·87 Great Northern 52·68 Great Eastern 53·96 Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln 45·24 London and South-Western 53·63 South-Eastern 52·68 London and Brighton 58·86 Bristol and Exeter 49·76 We need not, at the present day, discuss the abstract question of the value of railways to the community, but it will be well to record some of the advantages which the population of Great Britain has obtained by their establishment. Let us begin with passenger traffic. Previous to 1837, the year of the opening of the line between Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, the speed of stage coaches did not average eight miles an hour. The speed of mail coaches was a little under ten. It is true that in former times we were proud, as we ought still to be, of the roads which the skill and ingenuity of our engineers had, by means of what were then considered vast excavations, extensive embankments, bridges, viaducts, and other works, carried through the country. In one grand respect British roads differ from those magnificent constructions of a similar nature which Imperial Rome had accomplished when in the zenith of her splendour. Those were made without the slightest view to commercial objects. The power which it gave her to transport her legions from one extremity of her dominions to another was the sole consideration with her in inducing the formation of those great causeways, the remains of which have excited the admiration of succeeding generations, even to the present day.