VISCOUNT-ENFIELDsaid, he wished to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether it be true that in a Report sent in lately to the Treasury the value of the materials composing the Exhibition Buildings are there estimated at but £30,000, less the cost of their pulling down and removal, and of making good the site; and whether there will be any objection to laying such Report upon the table of the House previous to a Vote being asked of £80,000 for the purchase of such buildings.
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, in reply that the question was one which he might answer with a dry negative. Such an answer would not, however, in all probability, be satisfactory to his noble Friend, because it was plain that he must have been misled as to the nature of the Report to which he referred. He would therefore tell him how the matter really stood. No Report of ah official character, or drawn up by any person employed by the Government for the purpose of making an estimate of the removable value of the materials of the Exhibition Building had been sent to the Treasury. At the close of the Exhibition it became the duty of Mr. Bowring, the very able Secretary of the Commissioners of 1851, to frame a statement with the view of placing before the Commissioners their exact financial position in relation to the transactions into which they had entered. At a subsequent date Mr. Bowring drew up another statement, which was intended to place before the Government as many of the facts relating to the Commissioners of 1851 as 1176 were material, with regard to the letter which the Commissioners had addressed to the Government inquiring whether they meant to renew their proposal of last year for the purchase of the land. Mr. Bowring, in making his statement, did not in the slightest degree presume or intend to form an accurate estimate of the nature of the materials. He gave a rough sketch of what he conceived would have to be paid if the intention of getting possession of the building was carried into effect. He stated the minimum value of the materials at £30,000. He had not done yet. The maximum value Mr. Bowring set down at £200,000. It was therefore at some point between £30,000 and £200,000 that he thought the contractors would be entitled to fix their demand. He cautiously added—
It is only fair to the contractors to say that they estimated the net value of the old materials at a considerably higher sum. The bricks in the annexes have been sold by them at prices which, if realized for the bricks in the main building, would produce a net sum of £18,000.He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) need not remind the House that besides the bricks there was the timber, the glass, and the iron, which were very valuable, and which would realize a very large sum of money. The estimate on which the Government proceeded was a very different one. It was an examination carefully made by professional persons during many days. It should, he might add, be borne in mind, that nothing was more open to discussion than the particular point at which the removable value of the materials of a building should be fixed. No positive standard could be taken in the matter. It must depend mainly on the market for the materials. That market must depend on their nearness or distance, and a fundamental element in the whole question was the time within which the parties would be compelled to clear the ground. The contractors were under no obligations to take down the building in the shortest possible time; and there was scarcely a probability of the Government getting the command of the ground for the purpose of raising any new structure before the summer of 1865 at the earliest.