The points suggested by the letter printed in the Fors of September,
respecting the minor action of English Magistracy, must still be kept
for subsequent consideration, our to-day’s work having been too general
to reach them.
I have an interesting letter from a man of business, remonstrating with
me on my declaration that railroads should no more pay dividends than
carriage roads, or field footpaths.
He is a gentle man of business, and meshed, as moderately well-meaning
people, nowadays, always are, in a web of equivocation between what is
profitable and benevolent.
He says that people who make railroads should be rewarded by dividends
for having acted so benevolently towards the public, and provided it
with these beautiful and easy means of locomotion. But my correspondent
is too good a man of business to remain in this entanglement of
brains—unless by his own fault. He knows perfectly well, in his heart,
that the ‘benevolence’ involved in the construction of railways amounts
exactly to this much and no more,—that if the British public were
informed that engineers were now confident, after their practice in the
Cenis and St. Gothard tunnels, that they could make a railway to
Hell,—the British public would instantly invest in the concern to any
amount; and stop church-building all over the country, for fear of
diminishing the dividends.