THE STOUT INTERVIEW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8949, 13 January 1888, Page 5

THE STOUT INTERVIEW.

HIS REMARKS ABOUT THE MIDLAND RAILWAY. •

SURPRISE IN POLITICAL CIRCLES.

WHAT A DUNEDIN JOURNAL SAYS. fBS TKLSGRAPB, — own CORRESPONDENT.]

Ddnedin, Thursday. The interview between Sir Robert Stout and your special correspondent" is likely to bring Bome trouble upon the late Premier. The Duoedin Star of to-day has the following:—"A good deal of surprise has been created in wellinformed political oircles by the publio statement of Sir Robert Stout, that the Midland Railway Company have got ten times more concessions than they would have got had he been in office. It happens singularly enough that the main concession demanded Iby the company on this last occasion, the concession relating to the guarantee by the colony that the land granted to the company shall represent a specified money value, was a consequence of the statement made by Sir Robert Stout in one of his publio speeches, that the land to be granted to tho company was absolutely worthless. This publio utterance of the late Prime Minister of the colony reached the capitalist*, who were on the point of advancing three millions of money to the Midland Railway Company, but after such a statement, coming from such a high quarter, the capitalists had no alternative but to demand that the colony should guarantee the value of the land. The Government and Parliament were much astonished at such a demand ; but there was Sir Robert Stout's speech, quoted in the company's letter from England, and there was nothing for it hut to grant the concession or allow the Midland Railway Company to fall through. And so it has again to be reoorded in the history of tho unhappy country that it loses heavily in consequence of having to grant large concessions owing to the wild and reokless statements of the late Premier."