, twice in every year, returns
showing the amount of rolling stock fitted with continuous brakes, the
description of brake and whether self-acting and instantaneous in action.
So far there was no compulsion upon the railways to use continuous
brakes, though most of the companies were earnestly studying the subject,
but the rival claims of inventors and the uncertainty as to which
invention would best stand the test of time tended to retard their
adoption. Meanwhile, the publicity afforded by the Board of Trade
Returns, and public discussion, helped to hasten events and the climax
was reached in 1889, when a terrible accident, due primarily to
inefficient brake power, occurred in Ireland, and was attended with great
loss of life. The Board of Trade was in that year invested with
statutory power to _compel_ railway companies, within a given time, to
provide all passenger trains with automatic continuous brakes.

In 1878 there was also passed the _Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act_.
Foot and mouth disease had for some time been rife in Great Britain and
Ireland, and legislation became necessary. The Act applied not only to
railways but was also directed to the general control and supervision of
flocks and herds. It contained a number of clauses concerning transit by
rail, and invested the Privy Council with authority to make regulations,
the carrying out of which, as affecting the Glasgow and South-Western
Railway, devolved upon me, and for a year or two occupied much of my
time.

An Act to extend and regulate the liability of employers, and to provide
for compensation for personal injuries suffered by workmen in their
service, came into force in 1880. It was called the _Employers'
Liability Act_, and was the first step in that class of legislation,
which has since been greatly extended, and with which both employer and
employed, are now familiar.

That great convenience the _Parcel Post_, which for the first time
secured to the public the advantage of having parcels sent to any part of
the United Kingdom at a fixed charge, and which seems now as necessary to
modern life as the telephone or the telegraph, and as, perhaps, a few
years hence, the airship will be, was brought into existence by the _Post
Office (Parcels) Act_, 1882. Under that Act it was ordained that the
railways of the United Kingdom should carry by all trains whatever
parcels should be handed to them for transit by the Post Office, the
railway remu