§ MR. ALCOCKsaid, he wished to call the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the expediency of offering the surplus land in Battersea Park (100 acres) for sale by auction, with a reserved price of £284,730 9s. 3d., in order to refund to the Government the loans advanced on account of Battersea Park, Chelsea Bridge, and Chelsea Embankment. It had been contended that it was not fair to make the Chief Commissioner sell this land now, when in fifteen or twenty years it would become so much more valuable; but the toll ought not to be kept on for fifteen or 1395 twenty years with that object, as they would thereby be charging the public of Chelsea and Battersea £6,500 a year or £130,000 if it was kept up for twenty years. He agreed that the House ought not to be asked for a single sixpence for the purpose of carrying out improvements in Chelsea or anywhere else in London; but at the same time they had no right to charge the people of those districts £6,500 a year for tolls in order that the land might be more valuable twenty years hence. His proposition was to test the value of the land by putting it up to auction, and if the price fell short of the debts for which it was liable, he had no doubt that the people of London, like those of Birmingham in the case of Aston Park, would raise the difference. The Chief Commissioner had no right to prevent the land being sold merely that he might ride over it as if it were his own, and keep the patronage that was attached to it.