The report presented by a Committee of Shareholders in the
Eastern Counties Railway is an explosion, of a character which classes it with other recent eruptions in the commercial world. Not that the case, like that of Strahan, Paul, and Bates, is of a kind to come before the criminal courts, or indeed that there is any case of malversation. It turns out that the Chairman of the Company has been a shareholder and promoter of other under- takings, to which the time and even funds of the Eastern Counties Railway Company have been rendered subservient. The Locomo- tive Superintendent of the Company, with a salary of 6001., has received percentages amounting to 20,0001. Be has been shareholder in a coal company which runs its traffic upon the Eastern Counties line at ruinously low rates, giving it a monopoly ; while the Company has supplied the carriages and has repaired them. In a similar manner, the company has been led into a variety of speculations,—branch lines, steam-boats running to Ipswich and to Belgium, cabs, and even a dancing saloon in Woolwich Gardens ! As language is given to man to conceal his thoughts, the accounts of the Company have been framed as if figures were given to managers to conceal their sets. Hence, while the business of the Company has been enormously expanding, and its receipts steadily increasing, its dividends have as steadily declined. It is not, however, the commercial failure which is the surprise, but it is the extraordinary sense of respon- sibility evinced by the officers, and the passiveness of the share- holders. It shows into what mad schemes and indefinite losses men may be led who do not look after their own affairs.
