These include light railways, but are exclusive of all
railways, light or ordinary, that are worked not by themselves but by
other companies. Scotland has exhibited her usual good sense, her canny,
thrifty way, by keeping the number of _operating_ railway companies
within such moderate bounds. Ireland does not show so well, and England
relatively is almost as bad as Ireland, yet England might well have shown
the path of prudence to her poorer sister by greater adventure herself in
the sensible domain of railway amalgamation. Much undeserved censure has
been heaped upon the Irish lines; sins have been assumed from which they
are free, and their virtues have ever been ignored. John Bright once
said that "Railways have rendered more service and received less
gratitude than any institution in the land." This is certainly true of
Ireland, for nothing has ever conferred such benefit upon that country as
its railways, and nothing, except perhaps the Government, has received so
much abuse. On this I shall have more to say when I reach the period of
the Vice-Regal Commission on Irish Railways, appointed in 1906.
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