SIR.
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No. 25.
GOVERNOR THE Hon. Sir A. H. GORDON, G.C.M.G., to the RIGHT Hox. SI H. T. HOLLAND, BART., G.C.M.G., M.P. (Received April 18, 1887.)
No. 140.
Queen's House, Colombo, Ceylon, March 29, 1887.
I HAD the honour duly to receive Mr. Secretary Stanhope's Despatch, No. 10, of the 7th January last declining, for the present, at all events, to sanction the proposed extension to Haputalé of the existing line of railway from Colombo to Nanu-oya.
2. It is, I should hope, scarcely necessary for me to assure you that Mr. Stanhope is but right in assuming that all members of the Legislative Council, whether official or unofficial, and, I may add, with few exceptions, all sections of the community at large, recognise as fully as Her Majesty's Government could desire, that the decision of the Secretary of State has been given solely with regard to what appears to him to be the interests of the general community, and that it would have been more agreeable to him to have assented to the wishes, and given effect to the views, of the Government and Legislature of this Colony.
3. At the same time it cannot be a source of surprise to you to learn that the decision of Mr. Stanhope has caused deep and widespread disappointment, or that the Executive Council, the Planters' Association, and the majority of those interested, believing the validity of the reasons which appear to have weighed with Mr. Stanhope to be, for the most part, open to dispute, should be of opinion that their inability to assent to the reasoning employed, or to admit the conclusions based on it, ought to be respectfully stated to you, and a reconsideration by Her Majesty's Government of the decision arrived at at the same time urgently requested.
This course would equally have been followed had Mr. Stanhope remained at the head of the Colonial Office, but the fact of a change having taken place in the person of the Secretary of State, renders its adoption perhaps yet more expedient, as it is quite possible that some of the points discussed may strike you in a different light from that in which they appeared to Mr. Stanhope, and that you may be led to modify accordingly the judgment pronounced by him.
4. Before entering upon the main issues of the question, Mr. Secretary Stanhope, in the despatch referred to, deals shortly with certain subsidiary considerations." I will endeavour to imitate Mr. Stanhope, both in treating of these considerations before approaching the main subject of dispute, and also in discussing them but briefly. I fear, however, that I cannot dispose of them in quite so few words as he has done.
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5. Mr. Stanhope argues that "even if the enterprise were carried out forthwith,
a large amount of irritation and discontent would still survive among those who
would not have been benefited by the extension, and there is a likelihood amounting almost _to_certainty that strong pressure would immediately be brought to bear upon the Government to plunge still deeper into debt in order to carry on the line 46 to Badulla."
It is not perfectly clear to me who are intended to be designated as those among whom discontent and irritation, on account of not having been benefited by the extension, would still survive were the proposals contained in my former despatches adopted. It is no doubt true, that those who are eagerly pressing for the extension of the railway to Galle or Jaffna will receive no benefit from an extension to Haputalé, but this would be equally the case were the last-mentioned line, under any cireum- stances whatever, constructed before those in other directions are undertaken, nor would they be benefited by extension to Badulla, which is what the parties disap- pointed appear to be expected to require. On the whole, therefore, it is not probable that those interested in other lines are referred to. But if planters between Haputalé and Badulla, and beyond Badulla are meant, it is my duty to point out that the opinion is based upon a misconception.
There are no planters between Haputalé and Badulla, or beyond Badulla, who will nct be benefited, and most materially benefited, by the Haputalé extension. Possibly
• No. 15.
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