In 1849 the fares paid by the public for travelling the same distance, at an average rate of 22½ miles per hour (the express trains travelling at about 30 miles per hour) are-- £. _s._ _d._ Per Express and per Mail trains 2 5 0 First Class 1 17 0 Second Class 1 7 0 Third Class 0 16 9 2ndly. As regards the proprietors of Railways:-- In Herapath’s Railway Journal of the 30th of September last it appears that the capital expended on railways now open for traffic, amounting to 148,400,000_l._, gives a profit of 1·81 per cent. for the half-year, or 3_l._ 12_s._ 4⅘_d._ per cent. per annum. Deducting the non-paying dividend lines, the dividend on the remainder amounts to 2·09 per cent. for the half-year, or 4_l._ 3_s._ 7⅕_d._ per cent. per annum. After ten years’ competition with railways the dividends received by the Canal Companies between London and Manchester were in 1846 as follows:-- Per Cent. Grand Junction Canal 6 Oxford 26 Coventry 25 Old Birmingham 16 Trent and Mersey 30 Duke of Bridgewater’s (private property) say The dividends received by the Grand Junction Canal for the last forty years have averaged 9_l._ 10_s._ 9_d._ per cent. per annum. Great as have been and still are the advantages to the country of our inland navigation, it cannot be denied that the creation of railways was a more hazardous undertaking than the construction of canals. Without, however, offering any opinion as to the relative profits which it has been the fortune of the proprietors of each of these valuable undertakings to divide, we merely repeat that, considering the unknown difficulties which for some time must continue to obscure the future prospects of our railways, it is neither for their interest nor that of the public that the managers of these great national works should in the mean while be cramped by want of means in the development of the important system which it has pleased the Imperial Parliament to commit to their hands instead of to the paternal management of Her Majesty’s Government. If the present alarming depreciation of railway property continue, it is evident that decisive measures, good, bad, or indifferent, will be deemed necessary by the shareholders to prevent, if possible, further loss; and while, on the one hand, the public ought not to be alarmed at impracticable threats, it is only prudent to consider what will probably be the lamentable results of a civil or rather of an uncivilized warfare between the travelling public and the proprietors of the rails on which they travel.