Excerpt from Observations Illustrative of the Defects of the English System of Railway Legislation: And of Its Injurious Operation on the Public Interests; With Suggestions for Its Improvement But it appears that we are actually expendio g twenty-four millions a year, or thereabouts, on the railways now in progress; and the immense number of railway projects which it is supposed will be sanc tioned in the course of the present session, will, if they take effect, double, or it may be, treble this expense; that is, they will double or treble the sum which the country can conveniently spare for such projects. So disproportionate a drain on our resources cannot fail greatly to raise the value of money, and consequently to occasion much distress. Indeed there is very little doubt that this effect would have been already produced to such an extent as seriously to inconvenience trade, had not the last two or three years been a period of large, or probably, I should say, of unprecedented profits. But it would be dangerous to assume that these will continue. All experience shows that periods of great prosperity are sooner or later followed by a reaction. Should a bad harvest, or a period of great commercial depression and scarcity of money overtake us, while numerous expensive railway undertakings are in different states of progress, it might be impossible for the companies to borrow, and useless for them to make calls; so that the works might be brought to a stand-still, to the great loss of the share holders and the inconvenience and injury of the public. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.