Report of the Committee of the German Empire prior to its purchases of its main railway lines: The uniting of the property, of the traffic, and of the management of the inland main lines under THE STRONG ARM OF THE STATE, are the only efficient and proper means to solve the task."

We have already had Mr. Blanchard's endorsement of a uniform milk rate.

The conclusion is irresistible. The Royal-Railed Highways of every country must be under the management of the state, and of the state alone. So long as these national highways are supported by tolls, those tolls must be low, uniform, stable, the same for all distances.

J. L. C.

NOTE. The figures used in the first edition of this book as to train-loads, etc., and still retained in some places, were taken from the Interstate Commerce Report of 1894.

A GENERAL

FREIGHT AND PASSENGER POST.

66

CHAPTER I.

THE POST-OFFICE SINCE 1839.

NEARLY sixty years have passed since Rowland Hill startled the people of England with his project of a Penny Post," proposing at one sweep to reduce the average rate of inland postage from about tenpence to a penny, and to carry a letter from Land's End to John O'Groat's at the same charge as from London to the nearest village.

The scheme involved both a radical reform in rates and an equally radical change in the aims of the government. At the close of the seventeenth century, the Post-office was a part of the public service, being run on the cost of the service principle. During the early part of the nineteenth century, its chief end was taxation, and the rates were determined on the modern railway principle of exacting as nearly as possible the full value of the