The Railway oligarchs have had a sore discouragement this week.
They think it cruelly hard that they should have to pay for smashing people, and at last found a case to try. A curate in receipt of only 2250 a year received a concussion in a collision on the North-Western line, and the jury gave him 25,000. The Company appealed to the Queen's Bench, but the Court dis- missed the appeal. In giving judgment, the Lord Chief Justice declared that juries in his opinion seldom gave extravagant verdicts in such cases, that they had a right to take future ex- pectations into consideration, and that compensation ought to be given for the injury as well as for the pecuniary loss, remarks which jurymen are pretty certain to bear in mind. If the railways therefore wish to pay less, they must make their servants take more. care. Lives do not matter to directors, but dividends do.
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