§ MR. WATKIN,in moving for leave to bring in a Bill for affording better security to the holders of Railway Debentures, said, that it would be unnecessary to trouble the House at any length, as the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, to whom he had submitted a sketch of the Bill, had intimated that he would not oppose its introduction. He merely wished to say that he brought in the Bill in the interest of the 80,000 or 100,000 persons who were the owners of the £120,000,000 invested in railway debentures, and the object of it was to remove by legislation certain difficulties which had arisen, and to provide machinery by which, in certain cases, debenture-holders might take some share in the management of their own affairs. He desired to remove an impression which might be created by what he had said on a previous occasion—that the nominal capital of railway property in difficulties was one-tenth of the whole. Upon further examination, and having had a table carefully prepared, he found that the gross nominal capital of railways, where the interest on debentures had failed to be paid, was £24,700,000. This included nearly £17,000,000, the nominal capital of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. Out of the £24,700,000 of nominal capital, £6,600,000 only consisted of debentures, of which sum nearly £5,000,000 attached to the Chatham. Thus the whole nominal amounts of capital of unsound lines was less than 5 per cent of the whole railway capital of the country; and the 298 debenture-debt, inclusive of that of the Chatham, was only 1½ per cent, and exclusive of the Chatham, only 6s. 8d. per cent. Was it not, therefore, unnecessary that the House should be asked to take into consideration any general scheme of legislation? At the same time, he thought that whenever a railway company, sound or unsound, applied to Parliament to regulate its capital account, and to enable it to meet its liabilities and complete its works, it would be the duty of the House rather to facilitate than to place any difficulties in the way of such an application. Many cases had occurred in which difficulties had been got over by means of a perfect agreement between all parties interested. The House would remember the case of the Caledonian Railway. It was in the greatest difficulties when the shareholders and bondholders devised a scheme, to which they ultimately obtained the sanction of Parliament, and in the result secured a large measure of prosperity. He was not without hope that, if a similar course were adopted, companies now in difficulties might, in the course of two or three years, be successfully extricated from them. It must be borne in mind that he was speaking in the interest of property equal to £450,000,000, the development of which had conferred an enormous advantage to the trade of the country. He might say, for the satisfaction of the debenture-holders, that at the end of 1865 the debenture capital was under £100,000,000, and at the end of 1866 it was under £120,000,000. The total net profit earned by railway capital in 1865 was nearly £19,000,000, and in 1866 it was nearly £21,000,000. Therefore, if six years' net revenue of all the railways were thrown together, it would pay off the whole of the debentures, which were the first mortgage on the undertaking. The hon. Member concluded by moving for leave to bring in the Bill.
§ SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he saw no objection to the introduction of the Bill, as its provisions were prospective only. By the time it came on for second reading the House would have had an opportunity of seeing whether the plan could be adopted without injustice to other classes of creditors. He was glad the hon. Gentleman took the same view as he himself had ventured to express the other evening—namely, that it was desirable when cases such as those to which the hon. Member referred arose they should 299 be dealt with by special legislation. He also concurred with the hon. Gentleman in thinking we might look forward to a more satisfactory state of the railway world. He believed there was unnecessary panic in reference to railway property.
§ Motion agreed to.
§ Bill for affording better security to the holders of Railway Debentures, ordered to be brought in by Mr. WATKIN, Mr. Alderman SALOMONS, and Mr. LAING.