Now it is highly satisfactory to reflect that every one of the above costly precautions, as well as all others of a similar nature which a paternal government could reasonably desire to enforce, are as conducive to the real interests of the proprietors of a railway as they are to the safety of those who travel on it; for even supposing that the Directors take no pride in maintaining the character of the national thoroughfare committed to their charge--that, reckless of human life, they care for nothing but their own pockets--a railway accident summarily inflicts upon their purses the same description of punishment instantaneously awarded to a man who carelessly runs his head against a post. For instance, only a few weeks ago a ballast-train on the London and North-Western Railway having stopped for a moment, a goods-train behind it ran into it. No one was hurt excepting the Company--who suffered a loss of 4000_l._ by the collision. Independent, therefore, of the heavy damages readily awarded by juries to any one hurt by a railway accident, the injuries self-inflicted by the Company on their own costly engines, carriages, &c., are most serious in amount, to say nothing of the almost incalculable embarrassment they may create: indeed, taking into fair consideration the costly results which have occurred to our railway companies by the dislocation of a bolt, the unscrewing of a little nut, or from a variety of other causes equally trifling, it may, we believe, be truly said that the punishments which railway companies have received from accidents have, generally speaking, exceeded rather than fallen short of their offences; and thus every intelligent board of directors is aware that safety in travelling is more emphatically for the interest of railway proprietors than any other consideration whatever: in short, that there is nothing more expensive to a railway Company than an accident.