You shall not be hardly dealt with. As the
government will be able to make very much
more of your property than your narrow-minded
policy of conspiring together to raise fares and
oppress the public, could ever conceive of, so
that government can afford to be liberal to you
in its estimate of the value to be given you in
bonds for your shares. We passively submitted
while you bought up our houses and lands over
our heads, telling us it was all for our good; we
have borne your shortsighted policy of extortion
and discourtesy; but you have been a bad
steward; your enterprise has neither paid you,
nor benefitted us, and it is time the stewardship
were taken from you by a power that shall begin
to make you see that the public good and profitable
railway management are not incompatible.
Does some one say that the analogy between
carrying a passenger and carrying a letter is false,
because a letter is but half an ounce, and a
passenger is a really meaty hundredweight? Which
is, by far, the most expensive part of the postal
system? The transit of a letter, or its delivery?
Its delivery. Thank you. Granted, then, that
the transit of a passenger is something more
expensive than that of a letter, the passenger saves
the most costly part of the postal outlay, because
he delivers himself; the balance is therefore on
the passenger's side, for the additional expense
of transit is nothing to the saving in distribution
and delivery. Unstamped passengers—like
letters—will be charged double postage. The sad
calamity of Abergele is only one more instance
of the weighty fact that something like seventy-
five per cent of railway accidents are
attributable to the barbarous practice of running
excursion trains. Had there been no excursion
train to necessitate the shunting of those goods
trucks at Abergele, the Irish mail would have
proceeded in safety. Now, why are excursion
trains run? Simply because the ordinary fare
is thereby tacitly admitted to be excessive.
The fact of the crowding of excursion trains,
goes to prove how reduced rates increase traffic.
Once adopt Mr. Brandon's scheme, and excursion
trains will die out along with the need for
them; and with that blessed event will come
such an immunity from heartrending railway
disasters as we have never yet witnessed.

But what about the price of those shorter journeys
charged at sums already less than the
proposed new stamp-tickets? Mr. Brandon proposes
to leave all these as they are at present, or at most
to subject them to revision with a view to reduction.
Four years ago, Mr. Brandon first
submitted his scheme of Railway Reformation to
government. He has now printed it, appealing
to the public. Probably nothing is more likely
to commend the scheme to the favourable
consideration of a new parliament than the attitude of
the railway companies themselves, in perversely
refusing to see that their blind policy of conspiracy
is not only detrimental to public convenience, but
madly injurious to their own property. There
may be twenty flaws in Mr. Brandon's theory, yet
he may be on the railway track of the future
—whether or no, the day will come when a
shilling's worth of stamps shall carry their
purchaser from London to Aberdeen, and back,
post his letters on the journey, receipt a
couple of accounts, cover a modest acceptance
at three months, and stamp the cheque that
pays his expenses.

WALKS AND TALKS WITH THE
PEOPLE.

NO. I. THE ROAD-MENDER.

LET me define what I mean by the "people."
In one, and the best, sense of the word, we are
all the people, from the Queen to the serving
maid, and from the Prince of Wales to the
pauper. But the word "people" has a fictitious
and more restricted sense. In this paper, as in
any others that may follow, as continuations of
this subject, the people will be held to signify the
great majority of mankind; the hewers of wood,
and the drawers of water; all who live from
hand to mouth, on the proceeds of the day's, the
week's, or the month's wages; and all who have
fallen from this honourable estate to the lower
level of pauperism and crime.

I dearly love a day's walk in the country,
through the beautiful green lanes of England,
through the glens and straths, and over the
mountain summits of Scotland, along the margin
of the sea-shore, over the cliffs and downs, and
wherever there are trees and green fields, or
mountains, or a sight of lake or ocean to
be obtained. In my walks I am never alone.
I find companionship in the wild flowers by the
road side, in the birds upon the bough, in the
skylark poised high in mid-air, and dropping his
jocund notes down upon the earth like so many
diamonds of melody. I find occupation for the
mind in the varying aspect of the clouds, and
the landscape; a landscape which belongs to
me, far more than to the lord of the manor, if
I admire its beauty and he does not. But
though I enjoy the solitudes of nature, I
never hold aloof from the companionship of
man. I am fond of talking to farm-labourers
and shepherds, to beggars and to tramps, to
travelling tinkers, gipsies, and showmen. I
love to study the wild flowers and weeds of
humanity, as much as the botanist loves to
study and classify the herbs and flowers that
are too lowly and of too ill-repute to find a
place in the conservatory, but which belong
nevertheless to the great garden of God. In
my intercourse with the waifs and strays of our
civilization, I always find that I can learn
something, even from the most ignorant, if I take
to them kindly, and do not offend their pride.
The poor are as proud, after their own fashion,
as the rich; and the most degraded of men
knows that he belongs to the aristocracy of
nature, and that, like Alexander Selkirk, he is
"Lord of the fowl and the brute." He who
hath sixpence is king, to the extent of
sixpence, says the philosopher Emerson; and a
man is a man, and among the noblest of animals,
even when he is taken at his worst.