§ MR. R. N. FOWLER (LORD MAYOR)asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Portuguese Government, by decree April 16th 1879, withdrew a concession for a Bail-way in Portugal without paying for land purchased and works executed by an English contractor, and conferred the concession upon Portuguese subjects, under engagement to pay the ascertained value of the line, which was afterwards determined by a duly appointed commission of engineers to be £18,200; whether that sum, or any part thereof, has ever been paid; whether, in response to the reiterated remonstrances of the English Minister in Lisbon, the Portuguese Government, in November 1882, gave its promise that, on certain conditions being complied with, they would prohibit the Railway making its junction with the Government main line, and issue a decree to the effect that the new Company would not be permitted to exercise any privilege "until the matters in dispute should have been judicially settled;" whether notice that the conditions precedent had been duly 650 complied with was given by our Minister in Lisbon, upon which the said decree was published in due form; whether, notwithstanding such decree having been duly issued in the "Diaris," they permitted the Company to complete its junction and to open its Railway, so that, without any payment having been made, the Portuguese Government has deprived a British subject of his property, and handed it over to Portuguese subjects, for whose benefit and that of the Government itself it is now being worked; and, whether Her Majesty's Government will lay the Correspondence upon the Table of the House?
§ LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEThe terms of the concession under which the new Company obtained possession of the completed section of the line will be found in the Paper Commercial, No. 31 (1882). They bind the Company to answer before the competent tribunals for all claims which refer to acts done by the old Company. The amount of the liability of the new Company to the contractor referred to in the Question has not as yet been decided by the Courts of Law. The circumstances under which the line was opened, although Mr. Dixon's claims had not been satisfied by the new Company, cannot be explained within the limits of an answer, but will be fully shown in further Papers, which will be presented to Parliament if the right hon. Member will move for them.