" Timehri r and Development. 185 



tion to guarantee of 3h per cent, for ten years on the capital of one and 

 three-quarter millions reckoned on as the cost of a railway. The Govern- 

 ment was, however, to have, in return for all payments made in name of 

 interest, railway stock of a corresponding face value allotted to it. In 

 event of a gradual development which not before the end of ten years 

 would have put the railway on a paying basis, the colony would, according 

 to Sir Frederick Hodgson in his despatch of 30th April to the Secretary 

 of State, have had £668,500 stg. of railway stock, of more or loss value, 

 according to the success of the venture, which might either be applied to 

 the reduction of the amortisation Bond issue, which Colonel Link's scheme 

 suggested, or be retained as a profitable investment of colony funds and 

 for the interest, not, however, a controlling one, which it would give the 

 Government in the direction of the railways affairs. 



The author of " Railways Ten Years After" in commenting upon this 

 says : " It is at all events certain that no future proposals, if emanating 

 from financiers of standing, are likely to make smaller demands upon the 

 colony's confidence in its own resources. Indeed the indications all point 

 to the fact that if the railway into the interior is to be undertaken by 

 independent capitalists, they will share the scepticism of the leading 

 colonists, so far as to require the securing of a sufficient rate of interest 

 for a much longer period. The rate guaranteed by other South American 

 Governments is five per cent, for twenty-five years. . . The Colonial Office 

 has in the present year guaranteed four per cent, for ten years to Messrs. 

 Pauling, the contractors for the Cape to Cairo Railway, for the extension 

 of the Shire Highlands (Nyasaland) Railway." 



A country in which the inhabitants are disinclined to have any finan- 

 cial stake in development projects, is not likely to find many mad capital- 

 lists tumbling over one another in a rush to spend money within its 

 borders. From the above extract it will appear that the terms offered 

 in the Link proposition were at least worthy of more consideration 

 than they received. Indeed the attitude of the Government of the 

 clay gave some justification to the comment passed upon the matter by 

 "The People'' newspaper of 6th May, 1908. "It is evident that the 

 assumption on which the Government's conditions were drafted, was that 

 all the gentlemen connected with this proposed Railway scheme are out on 

 ' ticket of leave,' and are therefore to be carefully watched. Further that 

 their domicile is a land unregulated by any kind of law which would guaran- 

 tee the validity of a promise. We think in regard to both these points the 

 Government is wrong. We understand as a matter of fact that against at 

 least several members of the Syndicate there is no previous conviction 

 and we also believe that a recently framed Company Act is in existence 

 in the United Kingdom which contemplates and provides for just such 

 defalcations as those which Clause 9 (of letter Government Secretary to 

 Colonel J. W. Link 30th April) apparently is framed to guard against." 



From the Government side the negotations were certainly not carried 

 on in a way to elict any definite finding of the best terms on which a 



