The half-yearly meeting of the London, Brighton, and South Coast
Railway was held on Tuesday, when Mr. S. Laing made the regular speech of a railway oligarch. The shareholders, he said, had spent 14,000,000 in building branch lines, which would involve an annual loss of 136,000 a year. They "would have been better off if they had converted the capital into bank-notes and lit their pipes with them." However, if Parliament would but let them alone, he thought they would recover themselves. Of course shareholders applauded, but did it ever occur to Mr. Laing that the Company received its monopoly in consideration of services to be rendered to the public ? Is it the fault of Sussex that the Company has wasted, and muddled, and mismanaged till it cannot perform its contract without loss? Mr. Laing's theory is, that if the State will only give him a monopoly and let him leave his work undone, he will make money. We dare say he would, and so would any shipbuilder or Army contractor, on the same terms, and a profitable way of business it would be for the State. One would think the railways got their income out of the clouds, and dis- tributed it as so much clear gain, instead of getting it as they do, through special privileges lent them for a consideration in work.
Previous page
