The capacity of the law courts to regulate is even more strictly limited. For not only is it confined within the precise limits of the jurisdiction expressly conferred upon it by the Legislature, but further, by the necessity of the case, a court of law can only decide the particular case brought before it; a hundred other cases, equally important in principle, and perhaps more important in practice, may never be brought before it at all. Even if the court had decided all the principles, it has no machinery to secure their application to any other case than the one particular case on which judgment was given. There was a case decided 30 years ago by our Railroad Commission, the principle of which, had it been generally applied throughout the country, would have revolutionized the whole carrying business of Great Britain. It has not been so applied, to the great advantage, in my judgment, of English trade. Further, the great bulk of the cases which make up the practical work of a railroad: "What is a reasonable rate, having regard to all the circumstances, present and prospective, of the case? Would it be reasonable to run a new train or to take off an old one? Would it be reasonable to open a new station, to extend the area of free cartage, and the like?"--all these are questions of discretion, of commercial instinct. They can only be answered with a "Probably on the whole," not with a categorical "Yes" or "No," and they are absolutely unsuitable for determination by the positive methods of the law court with its precisely defined issues, its sworn evidence, and its rigorous exclusion of what, while the lawyer describes it as irrelevant, is often precisely the class of consideration which would determine one way or other the decision of the practical man of business. It seems to me, therefore, that both in England and in America we must expect to see in the near future a considerable development of executive government control over railroads.