NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

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 [262]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. [263]

1 See the part of examination respecting communication held with the brother of the prisoner. ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.