George Hudson, the Railway King, is dead, and everybody is
speaking well of him, and pointing out that, after all, the specula- tions he favoured have turned out well, and that he died poor. Quite true ; but what has that to do with the matter? Nobody ever accused him of stupidity, and the accusation of pocketing money may have been incorrect; but the main charge against him was proved, and was more grave than either. He did " cook accounts,"—that is, he, being responsible for accuracy, did sanction the issue of a series of intentionally inaccurate statements to the public, in order that certain schemes might be well thought of. That his figures proved right years after is no excuse for those statements, any more than it would be an excuse for a Chancellor of the Exchequer who misrepresented the revenue from sugar in 1870, if in 1880 his figures happened to tally with the facts. Falsehood is not truth because it happens to resemble a truth subsequently realized.
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