The purpose of this paper is merely to outline without elaboration the questions involved and the principles to be applied in the regulation of railway rates by public authority. If any argument is needed in support of the right and the duty of government control, it is found in an obvious and fundamental fact. Until modern discovery utilized steam as a motive power, the ordinary public road was the sole means of communication by land, the only pathway of internal commerce. Before this new agency was brought into service, while the old highways were yet exclusively employed, the right to their common use was nowhere doubted or denied. In recent times certainly—and this is the point of importance—the established roads, the strips of land set apart as ways of passage, have everywhere been regarded as common property, and the right to their common use has been the recognized and equal possession of every person.