MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN'S MOTION. we hope, be effected. The advantages which
would have fol- lowed from a partial revision of the duty are less than those which would follow from its total repeal, while, if the duty had undergone revision, the Government would take up the question to much less advantage than it can do with the duty remaining untouched. There is no injustice involved in post- poning the repeal, because every shareholder has bought his stock subject to this impost, and its unconditional repeal would be simply a free grant of so much money from the State to railway proprietors. It is a question of expediency, therefore, whether to repeal the duty or to retain it, and though there are strong reasons in favour of repealing it, there are still stronger in favour of not repealing it unconditionally.
On the former of these points there is no need to say much. Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen stated the argument for repeal on Tuesday, and though there is not one of his statements that can be accepted without qualification, they may be taken as furnishing a body of superficial reasons against the duty which is sure to make it seem oppressive. People are told that omnibuses are not taxed, and that river steamboats are not taxed. Of course, if they stop to think, they will see that there is an immense difference between vehicles which run along a road that is open to everybody, and vehicles which run along a road which can be used by no one but the proprietors
of these vehicles. But then .people who grumble about taxa- tion rarely do stop to think. If they did, they would be so much struck with the difficulty of raising so enormous a revenue as ours, that they would be more surprised at the success with which the difficulty has been surmounted, than angry at some little blemish in machinery which, on the whole, does the work so well. A Chancellor of the Exchequer may say of taxation as Turner did of painting, " You don't know how difficult it is." A good deal of commiseration is excited by the apparent inequality of the tax. It was a real stroke of genius when the Railway Companies bethought them of charg- ing the tax eo nomine on the travelling public. If they had merely allowed for the tax in their calculations of fares, rail- way passengers would have felt very much less interest in the repeal of the duty than they do now, when they have been told that such and such a per-tentage of the fares they have to pay goes to the Government, and not to the proprietors. Here, again, if people would stop and think, they would remember that whether there is a duty or not, the object of the Com- panies is to get as much money from their passengers as their passengers can be got to give them, and that fares are never lowered unless in the hope that the increased number of pas- sengers will more than make up for the loss on each one in particular. If the Companies thought they would make money by lowering their fares, they would lower them while the duty remains. If they think the contrary, they will not lower them, though the duty be abolished. Of course they will lower them for a short time, in order not needlessly to incur popular dislike, but railway fares are not a constant quantity. They vary with the amount of traffic or with the policy of the Directors, and though they might be lowered for half a year after the duty had been done away with, what guarantee would this afford that they would not be raised again in the next six months ? There would be a good many complaints about the benefit of the repeal being lost to the public, but the Companies would have the un- answerable argument to fall back on that it did not pay them to carry passengers at such low figures. The public, however, where railways are concerned, are a singular mixture of un- reasonable irritation and unreasonable long-suffering, and do not look beyond the fact that the fares they have to pay are weighted with their proportion of the tax. In this way self- interest, equally with commiseration, goes to make the tax unpopular.
A tax which is thus discredited is sure to go, whenever there is a surplus large enough to make remission of taxes possible. There may be some other duty which there are still stronger grounds for removing, but if the Railway Passenger Duty does not head the list of taxes waiting to be repealed, we may be sure that it does not come very far down. This makes it necessary to insist, whenever the subject comes up for dis- cussion, that it ought not to be repealed except as part of a bargain between the State and the Railways. Of course, those who deny that Railways are a monopoly will not admit this. They will say that as Railways are not specially favoured by the State, they ought not to hold any different position from that held by stage-coaches or steamers. The answer is that they are specially favoured by the State, and that the favour takes the form of protection from competition. Supposing that the London General Omnibus Company suddenly raised its fares to sixpence for the shortest journey, how long would it be before rival omnibuses appeared on every route with placards announc- ing that they were running at the old fares? But supposing that the London and Brighton Railway Company suddenly raised its fares to the utmost limit allowed by its Act, where would be the remedy ? There is but one railway to Brighton, and only last Session, if we remember rightly, the House of Commons decided that there should continue to be only one railway to Brighton. Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen indeed main- tains that whenever there is a sufficient demand, a railway is constructed by the side of every other railway. We should like to see him work out the application of this theory to the traffic between London and Brighton. Before railways can contend successfully that they are not monopolies, the compul- sory powers of purchasing land which are essential to the construction of a railway must be given to any one who can show that there is sufficient capital forthcoming to make the proposed line. We suspect that in this case every successive revival of trade would witness an addition to the stock of competing railroads. It is quite certain, however, that this will not be done. Parliament would never make a landowner sell his land against his will to ensure a very doubt- ful benefit for the public ; and so long as railways cannot be made without the aid of Parliament, it will continue to be thought that Parliament should not recklessly lend itself to schemes which, if they do not answer, must certainly involve those who enter upon them in ruin. Railways, therefore, both are and will remain monopolies, and the question for the State to consider is whether the services which Railways render to the public are a sufficient payment for the special privileges which the State accords them. It may be conceded that, as regards well-to-do passengers, there usually is no need for the State to interfere, at all events with reference to the oppor- tunities of travelling which are put within their reach. A railway lives, in a great measure, by carrying passengers, and it may be trusted, on the whole, to carry them as cheaply and as conveniently as it can do, consistently with earning a good dividend. In bargaining, therefore, with the Railway Com- panies about the repeal of the Passenger Duty, the State ought to look after the interests of the class of passengers whose wants do not always jump with the interests of the Railway Com- panies. In London, and to a lesser degree in some other great towns, the working-classes are forced to live in the suburbs. Land has become so valuable, that at every fresh clearance their houses are replaced by streets of shops and mansions. Up to a certain point, the Railways are willing to carry them a little way out of town, and to do it at a cheap rate. But there are many complaints as to the hours at which workmen's trains run, and as to the frequency with which the time-tables are altered in this particular. The truth, of course, is that it answers the purpose of a railway company to run a workmen's train when there is no demand for a train of a different class, but it does not answer their purpose to do so when there is a demand for a train to carry richer passengers. There is not very much difficulty, for example, about bringing the workman into town, because he usually wants to travel at five or six in the morning, an hour at which the majority of season ticket- holders are still in bed. But it is a different matter when it comes to taking him out of town, because he wants to travel at five or six in the evening, which is precisely the hour when the trains are filled with season ticket-holders. This is only one of the points upon which the Government ought to lay down conditions before it abolishes the passenger duty. But it would be enough of itself to supply a convincing argument against letting slip the best opportunity for making terms with the Railway Companies that is ever likely to present itself.
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