RAILWAY AND CANAL BILLS. (Hansard, 2 December 1852)

§ MR. WALPOLE
said, in the absence of his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, he had to move for a Select Committee to consider the principle of amalgamation as applied to Railway or Railway and Canal Bills about to be brought under the consideration of Parliament.

MR. ELLICE
would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should state the extent to which he proposed that the inquiry should be carried on in the Committee.

MR. GLADSTONE
said, he thought it would be very desirable to extend the terms of the Motion. There were other means of effecting amalgamations besides Amalgamation Bills, and other proceedings which attained the same purposes as Acts of Parliament. It was desirable the Committee should consider the whole of them.

§ MR. WALPOLE
said, that it would probably be better, in the absence of his right hon. Friend, to postpone for the present the appointment of the Committee.

§ MR. EVELYN DENISON
said, he thought it very desirable that they should know what course was to be adopted on this subject. If, on the one hand, it were inconvenient to move the Committee now, on the other hand there would be great inconvenience in the postponement of the Motion for any considerable time. He almost thought that the general convenience of the House would be best promoted if the right hon. Gentleman would move for the Committee that evening, and would take some other opportunity of explaining the views of the Government as to the course they would pursue.

§ MR. WALPOLE
said, he was not aware of the details of the measure which his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade was to have proposed; and, as there seemed to be some doubt whether the terms of the Motion were sufficiently extensive, be thought it would be better not to press it at that time, though he saw no objection to the sugges- 832 tion of the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone).

GENERAL ANSON
said, that it was his opinion that the scope of the Motion should be much more extensive than it was now proposed to be. He should be glad to have the whole subject of the future legislation with regard to railways submitted to a Committee. There were nearly two hundred Bills coming before the House for amalgamation purposes, or running powers, and he viewed it as of the utmost importance that the House should undertake the question, and that they should not be afraid to grapple with it, but should lay down some principle to guide those great companies, the directors of which were frequently unjustly attacked and accused of a monopolising spirit, when their only object was to afford a fair security to those who bad invested their money in these undertakings. It would be quite as well, in his opinion, to defer the Committee for a day or two, and in the meantime the Government might consider whether it would not be better to make the Motion even more extensive than the terms proposed by the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gladstone.) He had no objection to the Committee considering the questions of amalgamation and of leases and agreements, because, in point of fact, they were one and the same thing.

MR. ELLICE
said, he had had some experience of this matter in former Committees, and he knew that, unless the Government stated for the consideration of the House the policy that was to be submitted to the Committee, their labours would be of very little use indeed, so far as any practical result was concerned.

MR. GLADSTONE
entirely concurred in what had just fallen from his right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry. If the Motion for the Committee were agreed to, he took it for granted that the right hon. President of the Board of Trade would be ready to state the views of the Government before the names of the Committee were determined on; because it was quite certain, if there were one question more than another on which the House most absolutely required the guidance and assistance and restraint and control of the Government, it was the question of railway legislation. The Government and the House together had made but a very indifferent affair of it heretofore, and if a Committee were to attempt to go into the question without a previous declaration of the policy to be 833 adopted, they would become an instrument of mischief rather than of good.

§ MR. WALPOLE
said, under these circumstances, he would rather not move the Resolution at present.

§ LORD JOHN RUSSELL
presumed that the right hon. President of the Board of Trade would be ready to state what his views were when he proposed the Committee.

§ MR. WALPOLE
said, no doubt he would. His right hon. Friend intended to have clone so that evening if he could have been present.