The Lords on Friday referred the Bill for amalgamating the
South-Eastern Railways to a Committee, with the understood intention of rejecting the clauses which authorize the Companies .to increase the maximum fares, that is, to compel the public to re- lay them the money wasted in extravagant extensions, and to break to their own advantage the contract as to prices under which they built the lines. There is no branch of public business in which the Lords are so useful as in considering the claims of the _great "interests." They can neither be bribed nor intimidated, and they are willing to resist when the press will point out a reason, as bas been again shown this week. The Metropolitan Railway had an audacious Bill in the Upper House, which had passed through -Committee safely, Lord Redesdale being for once asleep, when the Pall Mall Gazette pointed out its audacity. The Bill was recom- mitted, the clauses will be altered, and Mr. Parsons will love the Pall Mall Gazette.
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