*LORD CRANBORNE: It represents, in its major part, the cost of bringing material up from the coast to rail head; and if the hon. Gentleman will read carefully the recent account of how this excessive expenditure arose, he will see that in almost every item a large part of the excess is due to what it cost to take the material from the coast to rail head. The traffic earnings amounted to £80,000 last year. With regard to the working expenses, it is calculated that the net loss will be £78,000 a year. But, of as the Protectorate develops, course, and trade and commerce increase, we

have no doubt that the margin of loss will be a gradually diminishing quan

tity.

MR. BRYNMOR JONES said there was a great ambiguity about the tables. The difficulty was that no distinction was drawn between the cost of carriage of railway stores and the cost of carriage of Protectorate stores.

*LORD CRANBORNE: The first table excludes the carriage of Protectorate stores and railway construction stores; while the second table includes the carriage of Protectorate stores, but excludes the carriage of railway stores. The hon. and learned Gentleman has asked me to explain the reason for the excess in the cost of the earthworks. Well, in the first place there was an under estimate, because of the want of a detailed survey, of which I have already spoken; and, in the second place, the bad weather, which stopped progress, was responsible for almost half of the cost The cost of the bad weather per unit involved an under-estimate of 20 per cent. on the earth-works alone. The hon. Gentleman referred also to the permanent way. As regards that, the rise in the prices of material and freight from England accounted for £16,000; the replacement of wooden sleepers by steel sleepers over the first eighty miles, £17,000; and the rise in the price of coal and in the cost of carriage from the coast, £35,000. There was also a small increase in the length of deviations, and a certain under-estimate of the cost of taking up deviations, making a total excess of £73,000,

In conclusion I will only say that I am perfectly confident that in any work of the kind blunders would necessarily be made; and I will go so far as to admit that the probability is that there would be a certain amount of waste involved.

That is not new to the House of Commons. Let the House consider, for instance, the Manchester Ship Canal. I used to be a Lancashire Member, and I know a great deal about it. Why, the under-estimate for the Uganda Railway is incomparable with the under-estimate for the Manchester Ship Canal.

It is our universal' experience, whether in our public or are always under-estimated. The House private capacity, that engineering works must not, however, think that I am defending under - estimating. On the contrary, I much regretted it; but as I explained on Tuesday, although there were circumstances over which the Government or the engineers had had no control which were responsible for a large part of the excess, yet, I do think that the under-estimate in certain important particulars cannot be defended in that way.. Mistakes were undoubtedly made, and on behalf of the Government I regret them. I hope the House, after listening to the eloquent defence of this enterprise by the hon. Member for the Cleveland Division, will be good enough to grant the money we now asked for, and enable the Bill to be

introduced.

(4.35): THE MASTER OF ELIBANK (Edinburgh, Midlothian) said he wished to make it quite clear that the original cost of the Cape and Natal Railways was £7,000 per mile, and that if the noble Lord mentioned £13,000 a mile the margin must have been spread over the several years since the line was constructed. On the same calculation, the cost of the Uganda line would amount to £15,000 or £19,000 per mile. He had always been in favour of the Uganda Railway. He thought when they annexed large provinces in Africa, in any shape or form, the sooner they joined point to point, as the Russians did in the East, the better. When he was in Rhodesia ten or eleven years ago he considered that the country was a barren and useless acquisition. Now it had 1,400 miles.

of railway, along which townships had sprung up; and in Fort Salisbury there was a population of some 2,000 white men. Personally, he would never hesitate to vote money for the construction of a railway in any province that might be annexed. For instance, he was in Khartoum this year. What was the result of the railway? Why, in the bazaars of Omdurman, Birmingham and Manchester goods were being sold. Though he believed the railway would pay in course of time, he thought it was open to legitimate criticism that the expenditure on the Uganda Railway was so heavy and extravagant. That made it very difficult for them on that side to support their votes before their constituents; but if a division were taken he intended to support the Government.

MR. JOSEPH A. PEASE (Essex, Saffron Walden) said the noble Lord had not met the gravamen of the charge against the Government, and had made no case whatever against the excessive expenditure on the Uganda Railway. From 1892 to 1895 he did what he could, in a humble way, to try to press on the Liberal Government of the day the necessity of proceeding with the railway, on the ground that the French were endeavouring to secure an interest in Uganda which ought to be secured for the Empire. The Germans werethen entering into an arrangement to construct a railway from their sphere of influence, and he thought it advisable that the Government should also construct a railway in their sphere of influence. The railway was advocated mainly on humanitarian considerations. The district between the coast and Uganda was alive with slave caravans, and the construction of the railway had prevented enormous mortality. Not only did it destroy the slave trade in the interior, but it saved a vast amount of life in connection with the transit of commodities from the coast. It used to take between two and three years for transit from Mombasa and back. Natives had to carry 70 lbs. on their heads over the 1,200 miles there and back; and only one in eight returned alive to the coast. It was to the credit of the Empire that it faced that situation, and acknowledged its responsibility. The Master of Elibank.

When Africa was apportioned they took upon themselves certain responsibilities towards the natives, and the railway was the result. As regarded the question of expenditure, it seemed to him absurd for the noble Lord to contend that there was any justification for pressing on the railway in recent years; and nothing that the noble Lord had said justified the excessive expenditure which they condemned. There was an allusion in the memorandum to £379,000 as being the gross working expenditure. To the ordinary individual that would appear to be a most extravagant expenditure, taking into consideration that there was only one passenger train a week from the coast to the Lakes, and only two Nairobi. That passenger trains to appeared to him to be a matter which required looking into. The officials no doubt desired to have as much money as possible to spend; but the House of Commons was the trustee for the British taxpayer, and should see that there was no extravagant expenditure. They thought that the Government was responsible for a good deal of the extravagance that had occurred; and they denounced it, though many of them agreed as to the desirability of constructing the railway.

He was

(4.43.) MR. JOHN BURNS said the noble Lord was not to blame personally, nor was he responsible departmentally, for the sad and lamentable revelations made on the Opposition side of the House, which were supported by quotations from various reports, and strikingly confirmed by the only hon. Member who had happened to pay a flying visit to the country. But the noble Lord was politically responsible for the £600,000 the House was going to vote. responsible for the many blunders he had himself admitted to have taken place, and he would be responsible for many more unless he was prepared to boldly face the situation revealed in the discussion and to set his house in order, and either bring home or dismiss any official who in the future carried on the administration of the Protectorate in the same wasteful, extravagant, and unbusinesslike way. If the noble Lord had couched the whole of his speech as he did

the concluding sentences of it, he would have been perfectly content; but while the noble Lord admitted blunders, and admitted waste, which he curiously said was not new to the House of Commons

*LORD CRANBORNE said that what he intended to say was that gross underestimating was not new to the House of Commons.

MR. JOHN BURNS said that the noble Lord admitted blunders, waste, and excessive expenditure over estimates; but the country was determined that it should be the duty of every Member of the House of Commons to take greater notice of expenditure, especially in those parts of the world where criticism was necessary both in the interests of efficiency and economy. The noble Lord expressed some modified regret at the blunders which had taken place, but he had not said a word about the future. He gave no promise of reform, and no suggestion that the experience of the past would induce him to keep a tighter hand on his officers, especially in the dark and outlying places of the earth. The railway was originally intended to cost three millions, and to this date it had cost nearly six. That was an excess of expenditure over the estimate the noble Lord was responsible for now. In the completion and the future administration of the railway, the noble Lord ought to keep to the closest line of the estimates. If he did not promise reform in these matters, what reason had the House to assume that the absence of the sense of

responsibility on the part of his officers out in Uganda would not continue in the future?

What reason had they to believe that his officers at the outposts would change their course of action, if they knew that Ministers here were prepared to back them up and defend them at all hazards? What guarantee had they that the expenditure would not go on as extravagantly in the future as it had done in the past? He did appeal to the noble Lord to make some promise that, if not this session, next session, when this question came before the House, he would do his very best to see that this railway was economically finished and satisfactorily worked, and that the whole administration would be put on better

lines. He was intensely amused at the deft way in which the noble Lord tried to balance the hon. Member for the Cleveland Division and other Members with whom that hon. Member was not agreed, in every particular as to the ex-travagant and wasteful way in which this railway had been built and the administration was carried on.

*LORD CRANBORNE: Not at all.

MR. JOHN BURNS said he never heard more damaging criticism made about the work of a railway and the conduct of a Protectorate than the hon. Member for Cleveland made, verified as he was by personal observation.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL: I did not say anything about the administration of the Protectorate.

deal with that later on. This balancing of one set of opinions against another in this House had been tried before.. Admitting that there might be some differences of opinion between the hon. Member for Cleveland and some other Members, they were in substantial. agreement as to the way in which this railway had been made. The noble Lord was prepared to accept the hon. Member's difference from his colleagues on this side of the House on a small throw over the hon. Member in regard matter, but when it was necessary to to a material particular, he talked about the tales of gossip which were told to

MR. JOHN BURNS said he would

travellers.

It was perfectly true that the hon. Member for Cleveland must have had tales told to him. But the facts disclosed in the Blue-book showed what the administration of the Protectorate had been, and it should be

remembered that it was not the interest of any official to put the worst side out. Very frequently striking defects were covered over by officials with the charity which covers a multitude of sins. He ventured to say that if the noble Lord! would look at his own Blue-book, and read, in addition to the views of Sir George Goldie and Sir Guilford Molesworth, the statements contained in the Report of Colonel Gracey, he would be able to correct his own opinion. Above all, if he would read the literature