Now as a matter of fact the English law never attempted to give the Railway Commission power to fix rates, except a very limited power in relation to through rates when the companies cannot agree, nor was it intended that the Commission should have anything to do with the “formation of tariffs.” Rates are fixed, not by the Commission, but by Parliament with the advice of the Board of Trade. When Parliament orders a revision of the maximum rates, the railways and the Board of Trade try to agree on new schedules, and the Board embodies its conclusions in Provisional Orders or rate bills which are passed by Parliament with or without amendment as it sees fit. This was true in 1873 and has been true ever since. The Commission’s duty in this connection was and is to hear complaints of undue preference, and rates alleged to exceed the maxima fixed by Parliament. If a through rate proposed by any company is objected to by any forwarding company, the Commission has power to allow or reject the rate subject to the limitation that it cannot require a company to carry at lower mileage rates than it is legally charging for like business on any other line between the same points. (Sections 11, 12, Railway Act of 1873.) The Commission may also determine the division of through rates if the companies cannot agree. Since the Railway Act of 1894 the Commission has jurisdiction under Section 1 to order a return to former rates charged by the company in case complaint is made of an increase above the rates charged in 1892 (the date of the last Provisional Orders or tariff revision), and the burden of proof is on the company to show that the increase is reasonable. This puts a limitation on the companies’ rate-making power in addition to the limit of the parliamentary maxima, for no matter how much below the maximum a rate in actual use in 1892 might have been, it cannot be increased if the Commission on complaint and hearing forbids it. Further, it is not the case that Parliament “abandoned the theory of the act of 1873” in the sense the reader might gather from the statements made by President Hadley. On the contrary, the Railway Act of 1888 (which resulted from the investigation of 1882, quoted by Hadley) distinctly provides in section 17 that “no appeal shall lie from the Commissioners upon a question of fact.” Subject to this provision an appeal was given to a superior court of appeal, the change being that under the old law the case went up on a statement by the Commission, which could therefore itself determine what were questions of law and what were questions of fact, while under the new law the case went up on the record and the court above determined what questions of law were involved. But the new law is exactly like the old in making the judgment of the Commission final on all questions of fact.