Adopting the suggestion of Government purchase (originally made, I believe by Mr. Galt, as early as the year 1844), but differing from him as to the mode of proceeding, my brother recommended that the purchase should be made gradually; and this not by compulsion, save in a few exceptional cases, but by free covenant between the railway proprietors and the Government; that the purchase should be effected, not by any increase of the National Debt, but on some such arrangement as is now generally adopted when one company becomes possessed of the line of another; lastly, that Government should not attempt to work the railways itself, but lease them to companies or individuals on such conditions as would most tend to public benefit. These views will be found expressed in my separate Report (for I did not succeed in bringing over my brother Commissioners to my opinion) at pp. cxii. and cxxvi.[144] Mr. Monsell, M.P. for the county of Limerick also made a separate report concurring in great measure with my own. It is foreign to the purpose of this narrative to dwell on the general advantages that might be expected to follow the great change in question; suffice it to repeat that, if effected, it would put it in the power of the Government to secure to the Post Office the prompt and unimpeded command of all railway facilities, and that on terms at once equitable in themselves and beneficial to all parties. _Arbitration with Railway Companies._ In the absence of those fixed rules which legislation alone can establish, frequent recourse is necessarily had to arbitration; which, however, is unsatisfactory in its results, owing, no doubt, chiefly to the difficulty of procuring an umpire at once sufficiently conversant with the facts and principles that should form the basis of judgment, sufficiently unbiassed to deal with them dispassionately, and at the same time acceptable to the railway companies. In cases of difference between individuals and large companies, the public feeling, as shown by the decision of juries and otherwise, is for the most part unduly favourable towards individuals; and, in like manner, in cases between companies and that largest of corporations the State, the feeling is unduly favourable to the companies; the more so as the companies can address _ex parte_ statements to the public, while even the highest fixed officers in any Government department are bound by official etiquette to silence.