The twin sisters of progress in our day, are free trade and the railway. Both are universal as regards application; both are expansive and ever expanding. They always advance, they never recede. Free Trade, however, is, so to speak, national, or of the nation as an abstract. It requires for its world-spread development no more than that trade shall avail itself of the advantages which unfettered intercourse between nations imparts. The railway is the commercial reality of everyday life. Its existence cannot be started without aggregated capital. It then becomes the earnest, visible, and ever-working bee in the hive, and by the means which it places at the disposal of all, not only are intercourse and interchange facilitated between nations, but among ourselves movement is giant-like and unceasing, not only for ourselves actually, but for everything that pertains to us in our wants and necessities, no matter under what classification they may be placed. A grand prosperity has been achieved for the nation, but the gold to which much of its accomplishment is due has proved unfruitful. The fact, undoubted, need only thus be recorded. Others can say of it what they please as a grievance. It may be said, and no doubt it is said, that want of success in railway investments has arisen from extravagance and mismanagement. Undoubtedly the assertion is in part correct as regards both the origination and the construction of most of our railways, but the incompetence of Parliament, its unfitness as a tribunal (notably so in the case of Lord Libeller), and the false system it has fostered, have contributed a much larger share than the other two elements to the present ill-favoured and unsatisfactory position of railways.