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90 [March, THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. system of Irish railways laid out by the commissioners, to be an extremely defective and objectionable one, as to the distribution of this intercommunication by railways through the southern division of Ireland, as far as regards the connecting of the cities of Dublin, Kil kenny, Limerick, and Cork ; although the royal commissioners had before them a very sensible and also an ably written paper by a gen tleman of the name of Sinclair, who seems to have studied the subject of railways with deep attention. He states in his letter addressed to Peter Barlow, printed in the Railway Report Appendix, A. No. 12, page 83, in which the following paragraph is to be found:— “ In laying out great or general lines of railway through a country, ray experience of the system generally leads me to think, that it would be extremely desirable to carry such main lines so near to considerable towns as to supersede the necessity of branches.” Let us hear what the royal commissioners say on this subject:—■ “ It is not by selecting a line to some large town, and conferring upon it the imposing title of a grand trunk line, that the object for which we are contending is to be accomplished.” Then, was it w'rong to have connected Liverpool, Birmingham, and London together by one main line? Was it wrong to have connected Bristol and London by one direct main line, and titled it the Great Western ? Nothing, in our opinion, is better than to have large cities at the termini of railways. The system of railways which have been proposed in the south of Ireland by the Irish Railway Commissioners, has evidently been copied from a small map of Ireland, containing a proposed project for making a main line of railway between the harbours of Kingstown and Valentia; the map is dated London, May, 183.5, and carries the sig nature of the person then engineer to'the Dublin and Kingstown Railway Company ; and to the activity of some of the members of that company has fame assigned so great an influence in the councils of the late Irish Railway Commission, not only in the drawing up of parts of the report itself, but also in the selection of the railway lines, as will appear by the small map alluded to ; and so highly injurious did this appear to some of the individuals in high authority, that part of the report which had appeared in the first numbers printed, was altogether suppressed in those which subsequently appeared, and this gave rise to a discussion in the House of Commons, to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not able to give a satisfactory reply. This trans action alone is strong presumptive evidence of the partiality and favouritism which has characterized the proceedings of the Royal Irish Railway Commission. We have been not a little surprised to find that one of the engineers who had advocated and laid out the line of railway from Dublin to Belfast, by Newry, along the sea shore, called the coast line of railway, appears also as the engineer and advocate for the railway commissioners’ inland line extending from Dublin to Armagh and Belfast. The in land line of railway is well known to be the avowed and open opponent of the coast line of railway : we conceive this proceeding to be cer tainly an anomaly in the jurisprudence of civil engineering. It is beyond our comprehension how a professional man could conscientiously reconcile to himself such a proceeding, or continue to possess that respect due to the integrity of his character, in becoming the professional advocate of a competing line, destructive we should think to the in terests of the Coast Line Company, by whom he was originally em ployed. On this subject we have already, in a very forcible manner, expressed our opinion that no engineer in the employment of any of the Irish railway companies should have been employed by the com missioners in laying out railways in Ireland, that they should have been careful to have kept themselves free from any hereafter observations which might be made as tosuch a proceeding ; but, this fair and straight forward course could not be done in Ireland, no, not even by a royal railway commission ; their proceedings could not be conducted without an open exhibition of partiality and favouritism by the employ ment both in the south and also in the north of the engineers of various competing and rival railway companies in Ireland. It appears that two systems of railways have been laid out through the south of Ireland by the professional engineers employed by the commissioners ; one to please the Royal Irish Railway Commissioners, the oth r to please the companies—ihosesystems being at utt^-r variance with each other; we ask would it not be proper to have those im portant differences first examined and investigated, and then decided by an impartial tribunal, composed of the highest engineering authority which could be found, totally unconnected with either the Royal Irish railway proceedings, or those of any existing Irish railway companies in Ireland. It is remarkable that although Mr. Nimmo, Mr. Telford, Mr. Bald, Mr. Stephenson, and other eminent engineers who were professionally employed in Ireland, to report on railroads, and that their reports state, that an income profit would be derived from them often, twelve, Mid thirteen per cent,; yet, the Irish Railway Commissioners have not noticed those statements and valuable reports. Further it appears by a printed report of Mr. Griffiths (one of the railway commissioners) on the proposed Limerick and Cork railway, that it would pa_v,a profit of II) per cent., while on the other hand it deserves notice that the Irish Railway Commissioners state that the suggested railways in Ireland will only pay from 3j to 4 per cent. “ And through whose agency do the railway commissioners arrive at this conclusion ? "Why they employ Mr. Stanley, of the Stamp-office, to make their calculations ; a person well qnalified to close bankrupt books, and give the balance whichever way the parties pleased.”—Mr. O'Connell’s Speech ; House of Commons, ‘40th July, 1838. And who has since been promoted to be Secretary to the Irish Poor Law Com missioners through the influence of the Chairman of the Grand Canal Company. A cry has been set up by the jobbers in public money that Ireland is not able to maintain railroads. It may be observed that it lias not yet been shown by any kind of well grounded facts, that such is the case. Because, the Kingstown Railway has been finished by private enter prise, aided by a loan from the state. The Ulster and Drogheda Railways are in progress of execution, and so would the Dublin and Kilkenny Railway, if it had not been checked in its course by the unfortunate publication of the Irish Railway Report, and also the Dublin and Limerick Railway. In all of which British capitalists had joined with the Irish companies, being perfectly satisfied, from accurate calculations, of a profitable result. Scotland has already made five railways, and there are five or six more in progress of execution in that country. And really we think that Ireland ought to be as well able to make her own railways by private enterprise, aided by British capital, as Scotland, if the public companies who have projected those works be not interfered with by the state. Have not all the Steam Navigation Companies in Ireland been eminently successful ? and are there not fleets of steamers sailing con stantly from Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk, Newry, Belfast, and Londonderry to the ports of Great Britain? Has not the Dublin Steam Packet Company alone raised five hundred thousand pounds sterling? And is not that company as well as all the others in a prosperous condition; these well attested facts speak volumes as to what private enterprise could effect in Ireland, if it be not shackled by state monoply, but aided and assisted by judicious loans from the Government, or as recommended by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1835. As a high authority of the value of private enterprise applied to public undertakings, we beg to quote the following observations of Dr. Bowring :— “ Dr. Bowring observed, there appeared to him to be a unanimous feeling in favour of the communication by the Red Sea. At present it was most imperfectly carried on ; but by the formation of such a com pany as that proposed, it would be greatly improved. An objection had been offered to the proposed plan of its being left to a private company', but that it should be taken up by the Government, lie had always thought that English commerce had spread to the extent that it had owing to its being left to private enterprise, and that it was desirable that it should be as independent of the Government as possible. It was in this spirit that the Frencn merchants replied to the great minister of the day, when he asked what he could do for their advantage, when they said, ‘ Leave us alone.’ (Hear, hear, hear.)”—Steam Communication with India. Public Meeting held at the London Tavern, Bishopsgate- street, Jan. 18th, 1839. Looking at the total exclusion of central Ireland, and the whole pro vince of Connaught, from railway intercommunication by the commis sioners, and at the imperfect and objectional system of railways laid out by them, both in the south and in the north of Ireland—again, at the numerous errors existing in the commissioners’ maps, sections, levels, and gradients—Fully' authorises us in declaring that they present a mass of inaccuracies unequalled in any work that has yet been published under executive authority by any state in Europe. The Report is deficient as an exposition of Ireland’s manufacturing industry ; of her internal traffic ; the amount of her agricultural produce; her mineral wealth ; her lake and river water power; the extent of her improvable wastes and sea lands; the value of her sea, river, and lake fisheries; the number of her steam-boats, &c. ; the extent of her coal and peat fuel; her lake and river navigations ; the revenue of her chief towns, &c. Nor does it appear that any correct geological survey has been made of any one of the Irish counties ; although a coloured map has been published by the railway commissioners, as if it really had been the result of an examination of the whole of the Irish strata, but this document is incorrect. The effect of the Railway Commissioners’ Report, clothed as it is with an official garb, has been to engender doubts in the minds of Bri tish capitalists as to the returns which they had previously expected