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am imputing evil motives to the Government. But I am striving to show that this enormous burden of £3,000,000, which they are endeavouring to place on us as the damage which we have caused to the colon}', cannot now be thrown upon us without exposing the Government to the charge of unfairness. If, in any words I have used, there appears to be any reflection on the moral conduct of the Government, I hasten to withdraw it. But even in the Counter-claim the Grown is charging Damage twice over. I pass on to a new phase of the question. The Government are now trying to make us responsible for all loss consequent upon the non-construction of the line, and also for all the loss in consequence of the locking-up of the land. This is a most surprising charge to me, and lam sure it will also be to you. It is, in fact, palpably a case of claiming twice over. We might reasonably have expected that once would have been enough, but here we have a claim made twice over. For if we had constructed the line, finishing it in 1895, the area would be reserved until 1898, and the colony would have had, of course, no claim against us in respect to locking-up the land until then, as that is what the contract provides for. You will observe that the Crown asks now to be credited with all the gain that would have resulted to it from the unlocking of the lands, and it places its loss in that respect at something like £500,000. I think I shall succeed in showing you that this is a palpable case of charging twice over. If we had completed the line the colony would have had no claim against us for the locking-up of the land. The Crown would have had the advantage of a completed railway, but in order to gain that it would have had to submit, under the contract, to the locking-up of the land until 1898. The Crown, however, asks to be credited, as damages, with all the results_ which would have flowed from a completed railway, and, in addition to that, to £500,000 for the locking-up of the land. Let us make this still clearer. Mr. Bell's second claim is that the loss through the railway not being constructed includes— (a) benefit to the whole population of Canterbury, Westland, and Nelson; (b) better and easier conditions of life to every man, woman, and child; (c) greatly increased promotion of settlement; (d) revolutionising of the coal trade; (c) immense increase of population of the West Coast and Canterbury; (/) increase of gold output ; (g) increase of tourist traffic; (h) increase of Customs duties; (i) increase of rateable values of land ; (J) public convenience and comfort; (k) loss of profits to Government railways—£2,l2o,ooo. I think that list does credit both to Mr. Bell's judgment and to his imagination. It at least exhausts all the heads of damage which could possibly, however remotely, arise from the non-construction of the railway. It would plainly put the Crown in the same position during the term of years contemplated as if the railway had been actually constructed by the company in its contract time. But that is not enough. Not only does it seem the Crown must claim the right to be put into the same position as if the line had been constructed, but it must also claim the right to be paid for that locking-up which was part of the price, or inconvenience, which the colony agreed to to get the railway. Again, I say, this is charging us twice over, and surely evinces an exceedingly zealous desire on the part of the Crown to inflate its alleged loss. But the details of this second claim are surely misconceived as regards the elements of damage. The population of Canterbury and Nelson, says Mr. Bell, is two hundred thousand ; and, as he says, one hundred thousand of these people would give £1 a year more for their houses if the railway were constructed. Well, if the population of Canterbury and Nelson is two hundred thousand, that would mean that every second person—man, woman, and child—would be a householder. If one hundred thousand of those people would pay £1 a year each more for their houses if the railway were constructed it must mean that those one hundred thousand are householders. Can anything be more absurd ? This calculation probably proceeds on the erroneous assumption that every man in Canterbury and Nelson is a married man, and that there is a separate house for every two children. As far aa I can make out, the proportion of householders to this population would be forty thousand, rather than a hundred thousand. Mr. Bell's figures work the loss out at £1,000,000, and mine work it out at £600,000 less. I leave it to the Committee to judge whether he or I is nearer the truth. But would householders of Canterbury and Nelson give £1 a year more for their houses or be really individually £1 a year better off because a railway ran from, say, Jackson's to Springfield instead of a coach ? Ido not pretend to be able to say, and I question whether anybody really is. But I do not think so, and my opinion is perhaps just as valuable or valueless as Mr. Eoper's or Mr. Louisson's. But it would seem that the people of Westland are in a much more unhappy plight. They would be £5 per annum better off, and that sum they have lost every year through the non-construction of the railway. There are fifteen thousand people there. Mr. Bell, of course, counts men, women, and children for this purpose, and this pans out £75,000 per annum, or £750,000 for the ten years. " Make it another million," says Mr. Bell, in a light and airy fashion. If you work that out you will find that, according to Mr. Bell's figures, that would give £6 14s. extra per annum for every man, woman, and child on the West Coast. If you take a family of a man, wife, and six children it means that every such man on the West Coast has lost every year from the non-completion of the line £53 125.; so that in the ten years every one of these unfortunate families have lost no less a sum than £536. Every father of a family of six on the West Coast has, then, really in fairness a claim against this rascally Midland Railway Company of £536, which he has lost in ten years from the non-completion of the line ; and, if the Government go on as they are doing, the line will not be constructed for still another ten years, for which, of course, we would be responsible, and each of these fathers could then claim £1,072. No wonder that the families on the West Coast are large when they have a claim of this sort against the company. But this is only at one endj of the line. The fathers in similar positions in Nelson and in Canterbury would each have ajclaim for £40. What would be the real result of all this to the company I will leave to the Committee to decide; but these figures surely show how utterly unreliable this kind of calculation is, and to what absurd results it leads. But there arises here a very pertinent question, and it is this : Would the colony or would any one else have carried out 15—1. 11.