Development and Taxation. 87 



Society and the Balata Association to study the question. The members of 

 this Joint Committee are pledged to no particular scheme, not even to the 

 acceptance of the principle that a railway would open up anything at all, 

 and its personnel is well known bi be representative in every sense of 

 the mercantile and agricultural communities (sugar being especially safe- 

 guarded) and to be naturally conservative in leaning. The scheme in- 

 volves the formation of a sister committee in London of proprietors and 

 others to advance the interests of the colony in regard to this question, 

 while ensuring all p-oper precautions. This may be the present Demerara 

 s'lb-Committee of the West India Committee or may be a body less ex- 

 clusively representative of sugar, for the fact (for which I can suggest no 

 remedy) that Mr. Mewburn Garnett is almost the only non-sugar repre- 

 sentative of the colony permanently resident in London, exposes the 

 West India sub-Committee to such a criticism. The Joint Committee 

 will be prepared to give any necessary information to properly accredited 

 individuals or syndicates who may desire to institute negotiations and 

 will be ready to give assurances of a fair consideration of any proposals 

 and. if they are found to have a business basis, of active assistance, to 

 secure a full enquiry at the hands of the Government and the Legislature. 



The theory of the Committee at least is sound and should re-assure 

 any nervous sections of the sugar interest that no proposal involving 

 increased taxation upon that harassed industry or a diminution of their 

 present labour supply will be accepted without full provision for their 

 special case. To this the industry is fully entitled as that with which the 

 very existence of the colony is connected. 



Since then the chief motive force of the Joint Committee in 

 question, which held its meetings in these rooms, has gone with the 

 lamented Hon. George Garnett, one of our Directors. I believe the Presi- 

 dent hopes to be able to revive its dormant energies and will not lose 

 sight of the subject during his visit to England. 



Mr. Parker thus advances the claim which this Society has so often 

 made that we must be treated not as a half -derelict island in the South 

 Seas (where some people think British Guiana lies) nor as a small sugar 

 island in the West Indies (which Demerara is dimly known to be) but as 

 a great continental possession of Great Britain as capable of develop- 

 ment by intelligence, industry and capital as any part of South America. 

 The actual amount unexpended of the 820,000 voted in 1910 for a 

 railway survey to Kaieteur is only S-t.374 but there would be no difficulty 

 in securing an adequate vote. Your Excellency has made public your 

 intention of visiting the Rupununi in September, in company with an 

 experienced railway engineer so that part of the scheme is in a fair way 

 to realization. The survey has at least made clear the fact that a 

 tourist railway to Kaieteur is beyond our present resources. Xo doubt 

 it has also increased the limited geographical acquaintance which many 

 people possess of the colony in which they w r ere born and bred or in 

 which they earn their living. The fact that the Combined Court ever 



