The Lords have been conversing on the dangerous extent of
the railway speculation, and the extravagant powers given by Par- liament to the speculators. It seems that some hundred and forty millions sterling would be needed, in two or three years, to com- plete all the projects before Parliament, should they be ratified ; while, inflated with the arbitrary power conferred by bills, cont-. ponies assume the most despotic control over other people's property ; treating country gentlemen and their time-honoured abodes mach as a Russian Emperor treats his nobles. Parliament seems host on restoring, in favour of these great corporations, the blind obe- dience to the lord of the Middle Ages. A special iron-arade into exist for their accommodation during a few years, then to be thrown up. Talk of driving a coach-and-six through an act of Par- liament !—coaches and six are obsolete ; but now-a-days you drive a railway through the whole "constitution" of the country, through its institutions of property, local attachments, and personal rights. Lord Brougham denounces, Lord Ashburton vaticinates, Lord Dalhousie deplores, but no one attempts to arrest the evil. Its very magnitude seems to paralyze even the thought of resist- ance : statesmen know their master, the railway shareholder, and -succumb.
