Mill
says : ** In many cases in which it is best to resign to voluntary
agency, the community needs some other security for the fit
performance of the service than the interests of the managers,
and it is the part of the Government either to subject the
business to reasonable conditions for the general advantage, or to
retain such power over it that the profits of the monopoly may
at least be obtained for the public. This applies to the case of
a road, a canal, or a railway. These are always in a great degree
practical monopolies, and a Government which cbncedes such a
monopoly imreservedly to a private company does much the
same thing as if it allowed an individual or an association to levy
any tax they choose for their own benefit on all malt produced
in a country^'^or on all the cotton imported into it. To make the
concession for a limited time is justifiable on the principle which
justifies patents for inventions; but the State should either
reserve to itself a reversionary property in such public works,
or should retain and freely exercise the right of fixing a minimum



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of fares and charges, and from time to time varying that
minimum. It is perhaps necessary to remark that the State can
become an owner of canals or railways without itself working
them, and that they will almost always be better worked by
means of a company running a railway or canal for a limited
period from the State/'

Gentlemen, the principles enunciated in that extract seem to
me to be as applicable to-day to private enterprise in railway
matters in relation to the State as when it was written. They
were the principles underlying the arguments upon which the
present policy of railway construction and of management by
companies was founded. It is a policy which, as the Stracheys
said, secures the legitimate interests of the State and of the
capitalists when funds are required : while it admits of the neces-
sary development of the railways India requires. These provinces
have now a most effective railway system, mainly conceived and
carried to completion in strict accordance with this policy. And
this, I take it, is convicting proof of the advantages conferred on
this country by a system on which Mr. 