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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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THITH C.O. 885

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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on the other hand indents that are specially recommended appear to be always dealt with speedily. We may mention that it frequently happens that indents which are really urgent are sent to us without intimation that this is the case. On the other hand some Colonies use on all occasions a printed form requesting that supply may be made on the earliest possible date, and the universal adoption of such a phrase makes discrimination impossible.

66. The Acting Governor of British Guiana states that the relations between the Colony and ourselves have generally been of the most satisfactory kind, and that the only complaint is of occasional delay in meeting requisitions. He encloses particu- Enclosure lars of five cases, which he observes on the face of it seem very lengthy intervals, but it is quite possible that they were unavoidable. The first of these cases (particulars of which are annexed) certainly shows that the execution of it took a long time, but some part of this is due to its being necessary to refer to the Consulting Engineers. The other four do not show any great delay, and in none of these cases does this office seem to have been in fault. We may remark here that the representation of the Colonial Government should begin with the date of the letter to us; in the present case and some other cases, however, the particulars begin with the date of the indent, which is often several days earlier than that of the letter from the Colonial Secretary forward- ing the indent to us.

67. The reply from Jamaica calls for particular attention, as it is the only one which alleges that our methods are not businesslike. Sir A. Hemming first refers to the decisions of the Secretary of State in the cases of certain railway material. This subject has been discussed at length in a correspondence which is not yet terminated, and we do not propose to go into it here further than is necessary for the purpose of considering the extent to which it is material to the present purpose. Sir A. Hem- ming states that the Secretary of State considered with regard to the order for freight cars that "there had been inexcusable laxity on the part of the Crown Agents.”

This expression does not appear to occur in any of the correspondence which we possess. In his despatch to the Governor, No. 94, of the 5th March, 1901,* the Secretary of State stated that "I have not been able to acquit either (the Crown Agents or the Consulting Engineer) from blame in the matter," and if this is the statement referred to by Sir A. Hemming we think that it would have been more correct to follow the Secretary of State's own words. The Secretary of State considered that there had been an unauthorised excess of expenditure” in the case of the freight and passenger cars, and trusted that in future we would be careful to obtain his authority for any considerable departure from the terms of a Colonial order." Our reply is to the effect that there was no departure from the order as no limitation of price was specified or in any way referred to in it, and though it is the fact that lower sums than those in- curred had been mentioned in a report by the Consulting Engineer no instruction was at any time given to us to follow that report. We accordingly left the matter in the hands of our Consulting Engineer. The case was, therefore, of a rather special nature, as it involved the question of our relations with and responsibility for the Consulting Engineer

68) The first enclosures to Sir A. Hemming's despatch refer to an order for stationery. It will be seen that the point of the complaint made was that the articles required were, except perhaps in the case of a few special articles, stock goods, such as could be filled by any merchant in London in three weeks." Messrs. Waterlow & Sons to whom the order was given and whose opinion we presume will count for some- thing, stated that only a very few were stock items and that the majority, including 1,830 books of various kinds, had to be specially made. The Government of Jamaica in their reply do not refer to this statement but simply reiterate that the time for stock articles should be shortened. We are afraid that the Colonial authorities over-estimate the resources of London in this respect, and that stationers in this country are not in the habit of keeping a large stock of special books and articles required for the use of Colonial Governments. If Sir A. Hemming will supply us with the name of the merchants who can supply them as requisitioned on the occasion in question we will most willingly place the order accordingly. We may add that Messrs. Mildred, Gove- neche, & Co., with whom Sir A. Hemming compares us to our disadvantage in para- graph 13, do not seem to know of any such merchant any more than we do, for they Enclosure place their orders for stationery with Messrs. Waterlow & Sons as we do. We have obtained from that firm and annex a list of the times occupied in supplying the Colonial

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firm, from which it will be seen that they were never less than two months, although usually the orders were small.

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Table B. gives a list of complaints made against Crown Agents during past three years." We annex a memorandum dealing with the circumstances of these Enclosure cases, which will no doubt be specially noticed, as this list is the only one of the J. kind contained in the replies.

70. We would remark generally that many of these cases are of a very trivial character, and that they mostly represent correspondence about delays, bad packing, shortage and other mistakes by contractors. Such matters are of frequent and in- evitable. occurrence in a large business, and although we are, of course, bound to prevent them so far as lies in our power, it is, we submit, absurd, unless some negligence or indiscretion on our part is alleged, to treat us as responsible for the errors and mishaps of suppliers and shippers. In the ordinary course such cases are settled between the Colonial Governments and ourselves, and it is seldom that when reasonable proof is sent to us we fail to recover the amount claimed. Up to the year 1900 our correspondence with Jamaica followed this ordinary course, and, though this list purports to be one of complaints made against the Crown Agents, this is imparting a character to the cases in question which they did not possess, for in not one of them up to that date so far as we have found was any complaint made against us or our modes of doing business, and it is obvious that in nearly all these cases there is absolutely no circumstance whatever against ourselves, and that the list has been made up simply on the principle of including every case in which anything from whatever cause has gone wrong. This being so, the fact that the Colonial Govern- ment has only brought together these 28 cases of "complaint," nearly all of them either trivial or irrelevant, from a period of nearly five years, seems to us to suggest not any faults in our system but its general soundness. We need, in fact, hardly make any stronger reply to this list than that furnished by Sir A. Hemming himself in the observation that they are cases "in regard to which the Crown Agents have generally been able to show reasons why they should not be considered in fault."

71. Table "C." is a return of requisitions sent to the Crown Agents during the two years ended 31st March, 1901, and table "B." of requisitions sent to the New York agents during the same period, the object being to show that a much longer average time is taken in England than in America for the execution of orders. These tables, although only giving short particulars, cover ten pages of print. We presume that it is not the intention of the Secretary of State that we should bring into this letter the question of commercial competition between England and America, and as no specific complaint is made so far as this comparison is concerned against ourselves, and, in fact, the Governor observes, in commenting on these tables, that "the Crown Agents bear, perhaps, an unmerited disparagement for faults that are not really theirs," it does not seem necessary for us to discuss in this letter more of these cases than is necessary for the general purposes of testing to some extent the adequacy of the comparison.

72. We would first observe that the basis of the calculation in table "C." of the time taken by us in executing orders is far from being true in fact. Thus, to take a simple case, it is made out that we took 26 days to execute an order for certain books. The facts are as follows:-----

Order received, 23rd Noveniber, 1899. Order given, 27th November, 1899. Books posted, 30th November, 1899.

We

Thus the execution of the order took not 26 days as represented, but only seven. are, of course, not responsible for the time during which a consignment which is ready for shipment has to wait for a ship; but the Colonial Government do not act upon this view, as any period of waiting is reckoned against us. The whole list is affected by this point. Further, although the Royal Mail steamers, sailing fort- nightly, do this journey in sixteen days, and the Bristol mails in less, some cargo vessels take much longer; from London the time is 25 days. We would also observe that in cases where an order has been fulfilled in instalments, forwarded by more than one shipment, only the date of receipt of the latter consignments is given. Thus it is represented that 70 and 97 days were taken to execute an order for certain medical stores. The details are as follows:-

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