PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O.885
19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
168
31 July 1908.]
CROWN AGENTS' ENQUIRY COMMITTEE:
Sir E. BLAKE.
crushing reply to that. I have not had time to look it up, but it is, as I said before, perfectly remarkable the way in which these sort of charges collapse. No one except a Crown Agent who has worked for many years as I have could understand it. Mr. Lyttelton put it to the House of Commons; he said he had offered to investigate any specific case against us, and he was bound to say that no case had been brought against us, and it is a very proud position. If you put it to these gentlemen and say, "Now state your case," they nearly always shy. This Mr. Walker has stated his case, and we shall investigate it.
3072. I think you are a little bit getting over the line; this is no charge against your competenco ?—1 think there will be an explanation.
3973. There is no charge against your competence, but it is a charge brought against the system for which the Secretary of State is responsible; so there need be no heat in the matter, or any feeling on your part that charges have been made and that they always collapse. If this is the system and it does operate in that way, it may be the cause of hardship and the cause of sore- ness. I will put it to you in another way. Supposing there is a local firm with an agency here, under your system by which you have certain people, and certain people only, on your list of contractors, could those local people ever tender-If the Colony asked that they should be invited we should do so, but our prin. ciple is to deal with manufacturers and hot with middlemen. Now Messrs. Walker are middlemen; they are excellent people for erecting or doing anything of that kind on the spot, but if they have to import their materials from this country they are probably not in as good a position as the people here to do it. They are middlemen.
3974. (Mr. Leathes.) This was a question of erect- ing 7-Yes.
3975. (Chairman.) I have never quite got an answer to the question I put to you, because it seems that real hardship might arise. It is not necessary to say that you do not approve of middlemen. Supposing there to be a firm with an agency here which is anxious to tender for work in a Colony, it would appear that un- less they are on your list they have no chance of tendering when an order comes home to you here?— I do not think that is a fair way of stating it, I really do not. I mean, that you are putting the view as pat before you by these people.
3976. What is the answer?-Their argument, I think, if it is examined, will prove to have no real foundation.
3077. Why 7-Simply because I do not think it will prove that they have over applied to be considered.
3978. Possibly they wanted and they could not?—I think that case requires to be looked into; I think there will be some very simple explanation why they did not get an opportunity of tendering.
a
3979. Never mind the past now, but take the future, and explain what will happen?-May I put exactly the converse of what you say. A certain Colony puts out tenders for coal, but it puts in stipulation which can only be carried out by a local firm. Our firms here in England have pointed out to us over and over again We cannot perform that stipulation! we should be very glad in- deed to tender to you for the supply of coal if you would only accept the coal overside ship in the har- bour: but when you require that the coal shall be landed and taken up the line and stacked along the line, that can only be done by a local firm." and the consequence is that all that business goes into the hands of local firms.
3980. I should like to ask a question arising out of what you have said with regard to local supplies and local execution of works and so on. How is it that the system of the India Office, who appear to have a rule rather more favourable to the local supply, whether of work or goods, appears, so far as we have had evid- ence, to work well and not to have any of the draw. backs suggested with regard to your system?—I know nothing about the India Office.
3081. (Mr. Gibson,) There is one point I wished to raise, and that was that Mr. Mercer rather gave us a reasoned view or judgment for the procedure under which it was impossible for a local firm to be put on your list here; he said that you only dealt with -home firms as you were practically the London agents
of the Colonjts?—That is so.
3982. And, therefore, it would be unconstitutional to confuse you with the Executivo Government, and, it. WBS impossible to bring local firms into competition with home firms?-Our position is this, that it is a matter for the local Government entirely. At the present moment we are asking for tenders for a railway on the Gold Coast, and we have sent out copies of the necessary papers to the Governor in order that if there is any firm on the spot who can tender they shall have the opportunity; but we should not exercise any judgment upon that. We should say, the Governor "must" decide whether the firm is fit, we cannot say.
3983. Granted that the local Government admit that they are competent, you have no objection to bring them into competition and let them tender with firms at home?-Certainly not; it is for the Government to settle and not for us.
3984. (Chairman.) Now we had some evidence about undue harshness, although it is not worth while to go into that at any length. We heard what Mr. Rees had to say about the Nyasaland Railway, and, perhaps, you would like to say briefly what you have to say in reply, but I should say before you begin that he did not bring any charge of any kind against you, other than that in this matter, which was rather an indeter minate contract, the Crown Agents had been unduly harsh. What do you say about that?-The first thing I should like to say is that neither Mr. Rees nor Sir Bradford Leslie has ever approached me on the sub- ject. They have invariably ignored the Crown Agents, first of all to the Foreign Office and afterwards to the Colonial Office. I have never dis cussed the subject with them. Therefore, everything that Mr. Rees and Sir Bradford Leslie have said to you they must have derived from somewhere outside the Crown Agency, because I have never had any con- versation with them on the subject. I am perfectly prepared, and should be very glad to give you the history of that concession, if you like.
3085. I think we know the history of it?—I do not think you do; I think there are only two men who know it, and these are the present Lord Salisbury and myself. The whole thing was settled between us. Lord Salisbury was then at the Foreign Office as Lord Cranbourne.
3086. Does it really affect this question?-It affects it very much, because one of the grievances arises from their having ignored this very material fact. There was a form of contract which had been drawn up by the Crown Agent at the request of the Foreign Office on which a railway might be built.
3987. A general forin?-A general form. In some way or another Lord Cranbourne got into communi- cation With Sir Alexander Henderson (then Mr. Hen- derson), and a copy of the form of contract was sent to him and he was allowed to cut it about just as he liked. As a matter of fact, he took out all the pro- tective clauses-all the clauses which were in favour of the Government-and this was sent to me for my opinion. Lord Cranbourne handed it to me. "Why." I said, "he has
out everything defining
senterl
to
cut
the nature of the railway," and it was repre
Mr. Henderson that I said there must be a specification. He said he would not have a specification. I said: "Let him put in a speci 'feation of his own and we will criticise it." FI.. said: "No, I will not give any." and I wrote to Lord Cranbourne that to build a railway without a speci- fication would mean simply that we should never know where we were. Finally, I got out of Mr. Henderson that he would build a railway up to the standard of the Bulawayo-Mafeking Railway, and it went into the contract. All the difficulty that has arisen has been due to the fact that there has been no proper speci fication for that railway, and that is not our fault.
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.
Sir E. BLAKE,
It is Sir Alexander Henderson's fault. The first thing that this company did after they got the concession-notwithstanding that Sir Alexander Henderson had been able to knock it about as much as ever he liked--was to drive a coach and horses through the contract. There was a stipulation in it that the Government should have the right to expropriate the railway at so much per mile, and, profiting by the long experience that we have had, we put in a clause to the effect that every security issued by the railway company should contain a clause to the effect that the Govern- ment could expropriate it at this price. In order to vade that they made two companies: The Nyasaland Railway Company that had the concession is a paper company; it has never existed. The company that has been before the public is the British Central Africa Company, which, as we had no contractual relations with them, was able to evade that, and therefore if, for instance, this railway is expropriated In the future, the probability is that some of the lebenture holders will say: "We had never any idea that the Government could expropriate us at that price." You see the railway is costing them about £7.000 a mile, and the Government have the right to expropriate them at £4,750, I think it is. All through they have done their best to bluff the Govern- ment. Directly the railway was begun we mended to the Foreign Office that there should be a consulting engineer and that he should have a resident enginter, and the resident engineer was sent nt to inspect the Buluwayo-Mafeking line to see that we got a railway up to that standard, and it is all lue to the fact that they have refused to give a rail- way up to that standard that all the fighting has been Laused.
recom-
3988. On that point we have a great deal of evidence and photographs, and so on, about a particular type f bridge, and Sir Bradford Leslie said he had done a great deal of work for the Government of India, and pat up a great number of bridges of that kind, and I thought that kind of bridge was really inuch Itter, but your engineers insisted upon the other kind of bridge? Because it was in accordance with the contract.
3989. That seemed to be in dispute, but, broadly speaking, the evidence of Sir Bradford Leslie was that although he had built railways very often, he had never had so much difficulty with any other?-From what Sir Francis Mowatt has said I think he rather Pok exception to my giving you a particular kind of information; but unless I give you these little facts I do not see how you are to arrive at a con- clusion. I can give you a very material fact. if you care to have it. I was called down to the House of Commons by Mr. Lyttelton to have an interview with Sir Alexander Henderson, and he went into all these questions and complained bitterly that they were being required to build a railway of a higher type than he considered it ought to be. I then made a suggestion to Mr. Lyttelton to this effect: "Why should not Bir Alexander Henderson be allowed to build any railway he likes, of any type he likes, pro- vidled, of course, that the land grant is proportionately inced?" Sir A. Henderson did not rise to that. 3990. He was not making a very good bargain as it was?-No; but it seemed to me that that was a per- fectly fair offer. He said that we were requiring too good a railway, and I have already stated the offer I made. I wish you to understand that neither Mr. Rees nor Sir Bradford Leslie has ever approached on the subject. The only time on which I have officially seen Sir Bradford Leslie and Mr. Rees was at a conference at our office in reference to the naviga tion of the lower Shire River, with Sir Alfred Sharpe, and the Chairman of the African Lakes Corporation. I was a very amicable conference, and the record of it is in the Colonial Office. I have never discussed the subject of this British Central Africa Company with Mr. Rees or Sir Bradford Leslie, and therefore all that they have told you is imagination, so far as I am concerned; and all the letters that I have written to them have been written under instructions from th Colonial Office.
3991. No suggestion was made that they had had numerous conversations with you?-Had you realised the fact that I had had no conversation with them?
• 21
169
[31 July 1908.
3992. I am not in the least surprised, because I gathered that although no conference had been sug gested on one sideʼor the other, the conversations would not have been of so amicable a nature as to make anyone here wish to have them repeated?-There have never been any at all.
were
3093. We understand you on the question of the line-as to what was the precise at loggerheads degree of strength of line, and so on-and we were not in the least surprised that you did not have per- sonal interviews, and that it was all done by letter?- All these letters have been written under instructions; they have not been our letters, but under instructions from the Colonial Office.
3994. (Sir Francis Mowatt.) You know, I think, when Mr. Rees sumined his case up it came very nearly to the position you claim, and, I think, very properly claim. His complaint is this: "I do not know that they (that is, the Crown Agents) have that keen sympathy with the desire of commercial men who wish to make a railway at a profit. We have to make a railway at such a price that subsequently wo may make it pay. The Colonial Agents are not accus- tomed to making railways under such conditions that
they are superior entirely to that consideration, and they have not to consider what will make it pay "?- I think that is begging the question.
3995. That is a very proper position to take up, and I confess I can see no ground whatever for complaining of that on the part of Mr. Rees.-Have you looked at the contract?
3996. No, I am not concerned with that.-The con- tract says that the railway shall be built of a certain type, and it is our duty, I submit, as Agents for the Government, to try to get that railway. If the Secretary of State says: "You are to give way," that is at an end; but until we are told to give way it is our duty to get our side of the contract in the interests of the Government.
3097. I quite agree with you, and I think the posi tion which they have themselves laid down is exactly the position which you were bound to take up; that it was not your business to feel keen sympathy with the desire of commercial men who want to make a railway at a profit; your position was to see that the contract that these gentlemen willingly entered into should be carried out?-Certainly.
3998. It appeared to me that Mr. Rees, in spite of the general bearing of his evidence, really limited him-. self to that. You wanted to get the contract carried out as it had been originally agreed to, and he wanted to get it carried out in a manner which would insure a profit to the firm carrying it out, and without any particular reference to the conditions laid down t Yes, the Secretary of State can, of course, relax the contract; but we have no business to do so, that is not our province.
3099. (Mr. Gibson.) Sir Bradford Leslie drew atten- tion to the fact that although the company were bound to build this railway according to the standard of this Buluwayo-Mafeking Railway, the conditions, of course, of labour and climate, etc., were very different in the two districts, especially with regard to the employment of European masons, and that kind of thing. Were their representations upon that point, with regard to varying the class of bridge and similar matters brought before your notice?-Our consulting engineers have always said that they are quite inad- missible; it is a mere temporary type of railway which the Government could not possibly accept. The difficulty in this position all turns upon the fact that they are entitled in payment for this railway to be given land-very large amounts of land-and if the Government do not get their side of the bargain how are they to agree to give the land?
4000. That point was submitted by the Crown Agents to the Colonial Office for decision ?-The amount of correspondence on the subject is enormous ;, it has been brought up over and over again.
4001. My point is that it was a decision of the Colonial Office and not of the Crown Agents?—The Colonial Office have always given the decision.
Y
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.
Fr Henderson's fauli,
Sir E. BLAKE.
The
company did after they got hstanding that Sir Alexander le to knock it about as much as rive a coach and horses through is a stipulation in it that the ve the right to expropriate the mile, and, profiting by the long had, we put in a clause to the y issued by the railway company to the effect that the Govern- it at this price. In order to
·
wo companies: The Nyasaland
had the concession is a paper existed. The company that
ublic is the British Central h, as we had no contractual was able to evade that, and e, this railway is expropriated bability is that some of the ay: We had never any idea could expropriate us at that ailway is costing them about Government have the right to 760, I think it is. All through bestuff the Gavern- lway was begun we recom- zu Office that there should r and that he should have a :he resident engineer was sent #ayo-Mafeking line to see that that standard, and it is all y have refused to give a rail- that all the fighting has been
have a great deal of evidence on, about a particular type ord Leslie said he had done a he Government of India, and of bridges of that kind. and of bridge was really much sinsisted upon the other kind was in accordance with the
be in dispute, but, broadly Sir Bradford Leslie was that railways very often, he had ulty with any other?-From t has said I think he ratlier ing you a particular kind of
a
I give you these little facts are to arrive at a con- you very material fact. was called down to the House ttelton to have an interview lerson, and he went into all lained bitterly that they were a railway of a higher type ught to be. I then made a lion to this effect: "Why er Henderson be allowed to s, of any type he likes, pro- land grant is proportionately erson did not rise to that. ng a very good bargain as it
to me that that was a per- aid that we were requiring
I have already stated the to understand that neither d Leslie has ever approached only time on which I have
1 Leslie and Mr. Rees was at
in reference to the naviga- ver, with Sir Alfred Sharpe, African Lakes Corporation. nference, and the record of it I have never discussed the ntral Africa Company with d Leslie, and therefore all
is imagination, so far as I letters that I have written
en under instructions from
made that they had had
ith you Had you realised
⚫ conversation with them?
169
[31 July 1908.
3992. I am not in the least surprised, because I gathered that although no conference had been sug gested on one side or the other, the conversations would not have been of so amicable a nature as to make anyone here wish to have them repeated?-There have never been any at all.
were
at loggerheads
33. We understand you on the question of the line as to what was the precise degree of strength of line, and so on-and we were not in the least surprised that you did not have per- sonal interviews, and that it was all done by letter?- All these letters have been written under instructions; they have not been our letters, but under instructions from the Colonial Office.
3094. (Sir Francis Mowatt.) You know, I think, when Mr. Rees summed his case up it came very nearly to the position you claim, and, I think, very properly claim. His complaint is this: "I do not know that they (that is, the Crown Agents) have that keen sympathy with the desire of commercial men who wish to make a railway at a profit. We have to make a railway at such a price that subsequently we. may mak it pay. The Colonial Agents are not accus. tomed to making railways under such conditions that they are superior entirely to that consideration, and they have not to consider what will make it pay"?- I think that is begging the question.
3905. That is a very proper position to take up, and I confess I can see no ground whatever for complaining
of that on the part of Mr. Rees.-Have you looked at the contract?
3996. No, I am not concerned with that.-The con- tract says that the railway shall be built of a certain type, and it is our duty, I submit, as Agents
for the Government, to try to get that railway. If the Secretary of State says: "You are to give way," that is at an end; but until we are told to give way it is our duty to get our side of the contract in the interests of the Government.
3997. I quite agree with you, and I think the posi tion which they have themselves laid down is exactly the position which you were bound to take up; that it was not your business to feel keen sympathy with the desire of commercial men who want to make a railway at a profit; your position was to see that the contract
that these gentlemen willingly entered into should be carried out?-Certainly.
3098. It appeared to me that Mr. Rees, in spite of the general bearing of his evidence. really limited him self to that. You wanted to get the contract carried out as it had been originally agreed to, and he wanted
to get it carried out in a manner which would insure
a profit to the firm carrying it out, and without any particular reference to the conditions laid down? Yes, the Secretary of State can, of course, relax the contract; but we have no business to do so, that is not our province.
3009. (Mr. Gibson.) Sir Bradford Leslie drew atten- tion to the fact that although the company were bound to build this railway according to the standard of this Bulawayo-Mafeking Railway, the conditions, of course, of labour and climate, etc., were very different in the two districts, especially with regard to the employment of European masons. and that kind of thing. Were their representations upon that point, with regard to varying the class of bridge and similar matters brought before your notice?-Our consulting engineers have always said that they are quite inad- missible; it is a mere temporary type of railway which the Government could not possibly accept. The difficulty in this position all turns upon the fact that they are entitled in payment for this railway to be given land--very large amounts of land-and if the Government do not get their side of the bargain how are they to agree to give the land?
4000. That point was submitted by the Crown Agents to the Colonial Office for decision ?--The Amount of correspondence on the subject is enormous;
it has been brought up over and over again.
a decision of the
4001. My point is that it was Colonial Office and not of the Crown Agents?—The Colonial Office have always given the decision.
Y
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
3
بيسيليسا
Reference :--
C.O.885
19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO!