1844. v. THE GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY Co. pellants have also duly kept the accounts of tolls, as THE QUEEN required by sections 19 and 20 of the 1 & 2 Vict. c. lix, and section 27 of 3 Vict. c. xlix; and free access has been afforded to them as required by those acts. The fares and charges for the conveyance of passengers, goods, parcels, &c., by the appellants as carriers, are regulated by the number of miles through which they are carried, as well as by weight, bulk, value, &c., and various other circumstances, in like manner as the fares and charges of other carriers. The gross sum received by the appellants as tolls, rates, or duties, including both what they receive from other companies or persons using the railway as carriers, and also the gross sum of the tolls, rates, or duties, of which an account is also kept, calculated upon all the passengers, goods, &c., as aforesaid, carried by them for their own profit, added together, amount actually to the sum of £1500, in respect of so much of the railway as lies in the respondent parish, for the current year of rating and this is the gross produce of the land which the appellants, if not carriers, or which a lessee of the tolls, rates, and duties would in fact have received as such lessee, howsoever, or by whomsoever the carrying business of the railway was conducted; and the appellants contended that this sum, (£1500), so found, ought to form the basis of any rate upon them in respect of their rateable property in the respondent parish. The gross yearly receipts of the company, including as well the tolls actually received by them as the tolls, fares, freights, and profits of every kind derived by them as carriers upon, and owners of the Grand Junction Railway, and its appurtenances, in all the parishes between Birmingham and Newton, and Crewe and Chester, excluding their receipts over the Liverpool and Manchester, and other railways which do not belong to them, but for passing over which, as carriers, they pay toll in the same way as the independent carriers over the Grand Junction Railway; and including also 1844. v. THE GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY Co. the profits of their stock in trade and personal property used by them as carriers in connexion with and upon THE QUEEN the entire Grand Junction Railway, and their working over and along it; and also the rents, profits, and value of all their stations and other conveniences at and between Birmingham and Newton, and Chester and Crewe, are agreed, for the purposes of this case, to amount to the sum of £440,366 for the current year of rating; and adopting the principle of a mileage division thereof, that is to say, dividing the same by 105, being the total length of the Grand Junction Railway, the amount is £4193 (and a fraction) in respect of so much thereof as lies in the respondent parish; and it is for the purpose of the present case admitted that the mileage principle of division is fair and equal as respects the respondent parish. It was admitted and agreed, (subject to the opinion of the Court as to the propriety and principle of each item of deduction), that, if the £1500 (that is to say, the amount of tolls) is to be adopted as the basis of calculation, then the full net annual value of the appellants' rateable property within the respondent parish will be 7127. 10s., being the £1500 minus the following deductions which the Court of quarter sessions find to be reasonable in fact, viz.— First, £20 per cent. thereof for the tenant's subsist- Thirdly, £350 per mile for the maintenance of the railway with the works and fences, and for gate- 1844. THE QUEEN v. THE GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY Co. Fourthly, £70 per mile for poor-rates, highway rates, church-rates, and tithe commutation rentcharge. Fifthly, £30 per mile for renewing or reproducing those portions of the subject of the rate which are of a perishable nature, such as the rails, chairs, sleepers, &c., when rendered necessary by accident or decay. The parish officers adopted, and the Court of quarter sessions sanctioned, by their judgment, a different mode of arriving at the net annual rateable value of the property of the appellants in the parish. They ascertained the gross yearly receipts of the company throughout the railway as stated above, viz. the sum of £440,366, and then made therefrom the following deductions, the propriety, principle, and completeness of such deductions, as well as the propriety and principle of the respondents' mode of arriving at the net annual rateable value of the rateable property of the appellants in the parish, being referred to the opinion of this Court; and the Court of quarter sessions finding such deductions to be reasonable in fact, viz. First, £5 per cent., for interest on £255,000, being the capital necessary for, and actually invested by the appellants in the purchase of engines, carriages, and all the other moveable stock necessary for the business of carriers as conducted by them in manner aforesaid. Secondly, £20 per cent. on the same sum, for the tenant's profits, and the fair profits of such trade carried on by means of so large a capital, and with such large risks, &c. Thirdly, 127. 10s. per cent. on the said last-men tioned sum, as the fair annual amount of the depreciation of such stock considered to be in the hands of a tenant from year to year, beyond all needful and usual annual repairs and ex penses. Fourthly, £198,962 per annum, being the appellants' reasonable annual cost of conducting their business during the same year, in which their earnings as aforesaid amounted to £4193 per mile in Leighford; namely, in the coaching department, wages of guards, conductors, porters, station-keepers, clerks, and policemen, repairs of carriages, trucks, and horse-boxes, horsing, parcel-carts, oil, grease, &c. for carriages, and duty on passengers, &c.; and in the merchandise department, salaries and wages of agents, clerks, porters, &c., repairs of waggons, &c., carriage of live stock, and expenses in both departments, and generally locomotive power, engine-men's and firemen's wages, engineering, repairing, and cost of materials, including coke, maintenance of way, repairs of stations and buildings, office and general expenses, including insurance, and advertising, charge for direction, compensation account, rates and taxes, law expenses, and general petty disbursements attendant on the several businesses of railway owners and of railway carriers. Fifthly, as the stations, offices, stores, and build ings, and repairing works and premises throughout the railway, have been and are separately rated in the several parishes in which they are situated, although necessarily used and occupied for the purposes of, and in connexion with it, and the conduct of traffic upon it, the respondents further deducted the fair annual value thereof, viz. £9150. Sixthly, £30 per mile for renewing or reproducing rails, chairs, sleepers, &c., as before. 1844. THE QUEEN v. THE GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY Co. 1844. THE QUEEN v. THE GRAND JUNCTION RAILWAY Co. The balance, amounting to the net sum of £135,589, was taken to be the net annual value of the whole railway, independently of the stations and other buildings, &c., rated separately; and the sessions found, as an inference from the above facts, that the railway and other corporeal hereditaments of the company in connexion with the railway might reasonably be expected to let to a tenant from year to year at the last-mentioned sum of £135,589, exclusive of the rent of the stations and other buildings rated separately, such tenant being assumed to have the power of using the railway and all its appurtenances, now the property of the company, under the same circumstances as the company, and with no other privileges and advantages than the company now possess. The principle of mileage being agreed upon by both parties as fair for the purposes of this rate, both as applied to the expenses and deductions, as well as receipts, the net annual rateable value of so much of the railway as lies in the respondent parish is to be taken at £1050, at least, supposing the principle of rating adopted by the parish officers in that case to be just and correct. Of the total net receipts of the company only about £30,000 per annum are received in the shape of tolls from other parties using the railway on their own ac count. All the other rateable property in the respondent parish is rated upon an estimate of the net annual value thereof within the meaning of the Parochial Assessment Act (a), and without directly taking into ac (a) The 6 & 7 Will. 4, c. 66, s. 1, enacts," that, from and after the 21st of March, 1837, no rate for the relief of the poor in England and Wales shall be allowed by any justices, or be of any force, which shall not be made upon an estimate of the net annual value of the several hereditaments rated thereunto; that is to say, of the rent at which the same might reasonably be ex |