PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :--
TELTIC.O. 882
اساس اسيا
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
4 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
134
capital, but also paid off the whole principal itself, and yielded profits which to some extent were devoted to the construction of other railways, but mostly absorbed in the general revenue of the Colony. The net profit has in late years averaged over a million and a quarter of rupees annually, and will increase. The sum contributed by the planters remains, with 25 years of interest, the property of the Colony, although the railway for which it was contributed has repaid the whole of it. It cannot but be said that the planters have the strongest possible claim that their money should again be devoted to the purpose for which it was raised, viz. : Railway con- struction. The planters have derived great benefit from the railway, but none the less has it proved one of the chief sources of colonial revenue, and proved an incalulable boon to the natives of the country. The Kandy line, although constructed entirely as a coffee-estate line, has developed such a varied miscellaneous traffic that now were the revenue from coffee struck out of the accounts altogether, it still would show a net return of over 4 per cent. on the original cost. The railways which have not proved as yet so successful as was anticipated, are the Matele and Nanu Oya extensions. The former, a very small line, just pays its way, and the latter is yet short of the full profit required to pay all the interest and sinking fund. The construction of these lines was finished just at the period when coffee in the districts had failed, and before the other products had taken its place. I have no hesitation in saying that the traffic on the Nanu Oya line is rapidly on the increase, and in a very short time the full amount of profit will be available. I may point out that the most recent information from Ceylon shows that the railway revenue for the first 18 weeks of this year is Rs. 89,000 a head of the same period last year. The continued progress of the planting industry may be gathered from a comparison of the total exports for-
Coffee Tea
Cinchona
Cacoa Cardamoms
1885.
cwts. lbs.
315,649
4,372,721
"
13,736,171
cwts. 7,192 lbs. 184,142
Coffee being the only product which does not advance.
1886.
179,210
7,849,888
14,675,663
13,056 238,947
In concluding my remarks, I am constrained to urge the claims not of the planters specially, but of the Colony generally, for active encouragement in all prudent well- considered schemes of railway extension. The very existence, commercially speaking, of districts, if not whole countries, depends now on railway communication, and Ceylon is being rapidly placed at a disadvantage in this respect. Even at this moment, when our position is less advantageous than it was, and than it shortly will be, I would ask that our net railway revenue in proportion to our railway debt be compared with our other Colonies, or even with Foreign Colonies of a similar character. Nor can a comparison of our mileage in proportion to population be favourable to Ceylon. The very heavy cost of our railways is undoubtedly one of the chief factors which leads to the retarding of extension, and the opinion, endorsed by many competent engineers, is universal in the Colony that such a cost is not necessary. So long as the Colony is tied down to a system which involves, as in the Haputale extension, the expenditure of 20,000l. a mile for a railway which it is estimated will have to carry an average of one small train, carrying 55 tons of freight up, and half that quantity down per day, justice in the matter of railway communication cannot be done to the Colony.
I am, &c. (Signed)
६
W
The Right Hon. Sir Henry Holland, G.C.M.G.,
&o.
&c.
&c.
THOS. NORTH CHRISTIE,
Chairman,
Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, Downing Street, London.
Planter's Association of Ceylon.
→
135
No. 32.
The RIGHT HON. SIR H. T. HOLLAND, BART., G.C.M.G., M.P., to GOVERNOR THE HON. SIR A. H. GORDON, G.C.M.G.
(No. 281.)
Downing Street, August 30, 1887.
SIR,
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge your Despatch, No. 140, of the 29th of March last, in which you urgently request a re-consideration of the decision arrived at by my predecessor as to the proposed extension of the Ceylon Government Railway from Nanu Oya to Haputalé, and invite my attention-to the reasons which appear to you to justify the reversal of that decision.
2. I have given those reasons my best and most careful consideration, and it is unnecessary for me to say that I recognize quite as fully as my predecessors the interest with which this question is regarded by an important section of the community in Ceylon, the ability with which the scheme has been advocated, and the desirability of imposing no needless checks or restraints on the realization of a project which, if it only fulfils the expectations of those who support it, will contribute materially to the development of industries closely affecting the prosperity of Ceylon. At the same time, I am not less keenly alive than were my predecessors to the fact that Ceylon has lately passed through a period of severe depression, from the effects of which her revenue cannot yet be said to have recovered, and that, therefore, the present is a time at which it seems hardly justifiable to embark in an undertaking certain to entail on the Colony a serious increase of financial liabilities if a single factor in the series of calculations on which the scheme is based should prove to have been erroneously assumed.
"
3. A great part of your Despatch is occupied in discussing Mr. Stanhope's reasons for doubting whether the conclusions of the Railway Commission appointed by you can be accepted as sound, or, in other words, whether the line can be constructed and maintained without loss to the Government. important, question which has been raised in this connexion is that of the ratio of An important, perhaps the most working expenses to gross receipts on the proposed extension, which has been fixed by the Commission at the exceptionally low rate of 35 per cent. You will remember that in your Despatch, No. 265, of the 19th June 1885,† you adopted the general manager's estimate of this ratio at 50 per cent. and that my predecessor entertained grave doubts as to the sufficiency of this estimate.
In
your Despatch of the 23rd June 1886,‡ you adopted the far lower estimate of the Commissioners with no more explanation than that contained in the 10th paragraph of that Despatch, and I am not surprised that Mr. Stanhope should have felt it impossible to accept that estimate, especially when I observe, on reference to the general manager's evidence before the Commission, that he was justified in his conclusion that that estimate appeared to be derived from the average rate of expense per mile throughout the whole railway system of Ceylon with additions for carrying the traffic over the main line.
4. In the absence of explanation of the remarkable decrease in the estimate of working expenses from 50 to 35 per cent., my predecessor was clearly bound to reject the conclusions of the Railway Commission, and if, in so doing, a reflection has, as you assume, been cast on some of the most acute men of business in the Colony, the cause is to be sought solely in the manner in which this part of the question has been presented for the Secretary of State's consideration. I may remind you that a Com- mission, composed of members quite as fully entitled as those of the recent Commission to the designation of acute men of business, made a report on the Nanu Oya extension equally authoritative, and supported by figures and calculations at least as detailed and voluminous as those now under review; and that that report has been entirely falsified, by the event. It was, therefore, not to be expected that my predecessor could accept an estimate of working expenses of 35 per cent, without the most conclusive justification.
5. You now explain the method by which that estimate was propared, and I must frankly admit that I entertain doubts as to whether that method can safely be adopted. It is as follows: the actual working expenses on the extension itself are obtained by
• No. 25.
† No. 1.
‡ No. 3.
T 2