Messrs, Maxwell and Hannay.

If you will give it a little attention you will at once see why I was not allowed to attend the Committee of 1890 (Mr. Harkness, chairman), or any subsequent one. Had I been placed in my proper position I would have subpœnaed Messrs. Maxwell and Hannay, and have asked them how they reconciled their evidence with the statement of their own accountant.

This table proves that all my calculations were sound, truthful, and well within the mark. It also shows that those of the manager and sub-manager were childishly astray, and makes it evident that railway men are not competent to deal with these financial questions.

I should like too, Sir, to direct your special attention to the first column of the table. You will observe that those who use the railways for distances of over 50 miles are less than 6% of the whole, but they have to pay nearly 37% of the revenue.

You will also see that the country interest, under the present system, has to pay 76% of the railway passenger revenue, while the city interest only pays 24%; and this unjust and ruinous inequality will apply to a much greater extent to goods traffic revenue, of which the country interest probably pays nearly the whole. This it is that has taken the value out of country land. How is it possible for the country to be settled under these circumstances 1 This is the great blot in our transit system, and, until it is removed, it is useless to expect any real permanent prosperity in either town or country. The adoption of the Stage System would alter all this, and give both town and country an equal chance.

One of the most plausible objections made to the Stage System is the assertion that we have not sufficient population. My answer, on the contrary, has been that it would give the best proportionate results in thinly populated districts. Again, time, and the course of events, has proved my calculations to be sound.

When the Zone System was applied to the Hungarian railways in 1889, the Government owned only the Main Trunk lines. These, of course, dealt with Budapesth, the other great cities, and the most densely populated districts. The result was an increase of 63% in the passenger traffic for that year.

In 1891, the Government had acquired the branch lines dealing with the most thinly populated districts. The result of the application page 8 of the Zone System to these lines was, that during the first year the traffic increased by no less than 110%, or 47% more than in the densely populated districts.

It should be mentioned that in both these instances the new system was running only five months and the old system seven months during the financial year, yet it produced these results over the whole year.

But the most striking illustration of the adaptability of a Stage System to thinly populated countries comes to us