St. Columkill's Farewell to the Isle of Arran, ON SETTING SAIL FOR IONA.* FAREWELL to Arran Isle,† farewell! I steer for Hy‡ my heart is sore:- Thus spake the Son of God, "Depart !" O Modan, well for thee the while! Fair falls thy lot, and well art thou! Eastward to Alba turns my prow. O Arran, Sun of all the West! My heart is thine! As sweet to close Our dying eyes in thee as rest Where Peter and where Paul repose ! O Arran, Sun of all the West! My heart in thee its grave hath found: He walks in regions of the blest The man that hears thy church-bells sound! O Arran blest, O Arran blest! Accursed the man that loves not thee! The man that slumbers in thy breast- *From the prose translation in vol. i. of the Transactions of the Gaelic Society, Dublin, 1808. In the Bay of Galway. It was one of the chief retreats of the Irish monks and missionaries, and still abounds in religious memorials. · ‡ Iona. § Scotland. Railway Reform. We live in a blundering world, and there are few things that would not be the better for a little reform. Even railways, the joy and boast of our age, have as yet, we are now told, fulfilled but half their promise. We might be spared so many collisions; fewer lives might be lost, fewer bones broken. We might reap the fruits of the victory of steam over horseflesh by arriving at our journey's end with two-thirds of the fare we now pay still in our pockets. While we have been battling for free-trade, we are the victims of a great monopoly. Thirteen large companies and above sixty smaller ones engross the railway traffic of the country, fix arbitrary tariffs, and convey a score of passengers, where they could, without any further outlay, speed three or four times that number on the path of business or pleasure. Government is aware of our grievance, and has taken the initiative in our redress. It has appointed a Commission "to inquire into the cost of conveyance on railways, and into the charges which are made by railway companies to the public."* We may be sure we shall travel cheaply at last, if cheapness is within the bounds of possibility. With Mr. Gladstone in the House and Mr. Galt in the book-club, the national blindness will be couched, and the monopolising companies shamed. The cost of transport is now vastly less to proprietors than in the days of coaches; to proprietors, observe, but not to passengers. A pound of coke burned in an engine will evaporate five pints of water; and in this evaporation a mechanical force is developed sufficient to draw two tons' weight on the railway a distance of one mile in two minutes. The same weight in a stage-coach would require four horses, and occupy six minutes. The result of this difference is, that railway companies can convey passengers for one-twentiethor, as some calculate, one thirty-third-part of what it cost formerly; yet the average fares are more than one-half of what they would have been by coach. First- and second-class passengers, indeed, pay three-fourths of what their fathers paid in the days of turnpikes. The great steam era, therefore, is still at fault. The tariffs are very various, and appear to be directed by caprice,-for * Circular in the Times of April 5. The in general the lines with the lowest fares are those which were the most expensive to construct; while others, which cost least in making, charge double the fares of those which cost the most. railway system, in short, is out of joint, and it needs a notable bonesetter. Private and public interests must be reconciled; and the hand which can effect this must be skilful and strong. I do not wish to set up other countries above England, particularly as our system of management is in some respects better than the Continental system; yet there are other points in which they have the advantage. Their second-class carriages are well cushioned, and made nearly as comfortable as our first-class; their cuisine is far superior to any thing you can find at an English station; their trains move slowly in comparison with ours, and stop more frequently; but, on the other hand, you have a better chance of reaching home safe and sound there than here. Then as to the cheapness of travelling, which is the main point at issue, the following table will best show on which side of the Channel the advantage lies. In Belgium, then, above all countries of Europe, the luxury of travelling costs least, and in our own fortunate island it costs the most. On some of the Belgian lines the first-class fares are so low as a halfpenny a mile, while with us they are on an average twopence-farthing. It is evident at a glance how much cheap travelling would contribute to our prosperity and pleasure. If one shilling would take us as far as we now get for three or six, the trader would go and select his own goods in person at the best market; the mechanic and labourer, with whom work is dull at home, would seek it where it is brisk; the sick would resort to the hills or the sea-shore; and many minds now stagnating would be refreshed and instructed by new scenes; doctors would be kept at a distance from our homes; and friends would meet more frequently. Till these happy improvements are attained, the vast labour and expense of boring through mountains, carrying viaducts over deep valleys and rapid streams, and consolidating the treacherous masses which once a sheep could scarcely cross, will have failed in producing their legitimate results. For arriving at these, various measures have been proposed; and notwithstanding the antipathy of the English mind to the idea of the State gradually purchasing all our railways constructed since 1844, it may well be questioned whether the advantages that would accrue to the public from such a plan would not more than overbalance any sacrifice of private interests here and there. If railway fares were systematically reduced by one presiding body,—say of a general board composed of twenty-four members chosen from the chief local boards, and of a president to change with the ministry,—it is morally certain that the result would be similar to that which took place after the reduction of postage on letters. As more letters are written now that their transmission costs less, and the postal revenue is consequently increased, so would the transport of persons and goods augment in proportion to the diminished expense attending it. It has been shown satisfactorily that railway fares may very well be reduced on an average two-thirds, and a bonus of fifteen per cent be given to shareholders by Government in the event of its buying up railways according to the provisions of an Act which may soon come into operation. * We are chiefly indebted to this Act for parliamentary trains at a penny a mile. It also reserved to the State the right of revising all the charges of railways whose average profits should at any time reach ten per cent, and gave it the power of purchasing from companies all future lines at the close of twenty-one years from the passing of the Act for their construction respectively, and on the payment to these companies of twenty-five years' purchase upon the last three years' average amount of their clear annual divisible profits. This average the Government has, it may be presumed, been ascertaining during the last two years and a half. The money sunk in making the railways has been fully taken into account in all the calculations to which I allude, as well as the additional expenses * See Galt on Railway Reform. Longmans: 1865. † Ibid. p. 161. |