Trade will allow them to construct the line in reasonable sections.
Having lodged their money, the company (or private speculator) will
only have to go to work under the (amended) Lands Clauses
Consolidation Act.

If this scheme were sanctioned we should have in the course of the
next twenty years, _as I estimate_, L100,000,000 additional invested
in England profitably--not under Government pressure, but by business
men to get interest. Even where the new lines paid little interest we
should get the accommodation of the public. We should have no big
village without its railway; and we should have a great extension of
private sidings. On the eastern half of England we might get a great
number of narrow gauge steam trams running along the present trunk
roads. (Suppose a steam tram from London to York by the Royston
route, going through all the towns, running trams an hour apart all
day, going eight miles an hour through the towns, sixteen or twenty
miles an hour in the country, taking up and setting down everywhere,
would it not pay?)

The only objection to Free Trade in railways is that it would injure
the existing railway monopoly. Under this principle no monopoly ever
would have been or ever will be put down. But I believe the existing
great companies would very generally gain by Free Trade in railways.

For, first, few new railways would be in direct competition with the
old. The old lines have level roads; they can run quicker and with
less wear and tear than the new ones, which would generally have
steeper gradients. The new Free Trade lines would be in the main a
network in the interstices of the present lines. By this the existing
companies would gain enormously; they would be the trunk lines which