476 THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 27TH NOVEMBER, 1875.
No. 211.
GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.
The following Report of the Crown Rents' Commission is published for general information. By Command,
Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 27th November, 1875.
CECIL C. SMITH, Acting Colonial Secretary.
REPORT OF THE CROWN RENTS' COMMISSION.
We, your Excellency's Commissioners, appointed to enquire into and investigate certain complaints made by the holders of Crown Lands in the less populous parts of the Colony alleging that the rents reserved by the Leases thereof are greatly out of proportion to the real value of the said lands, and prohibit the complainants from turning the said lands to profitable account; and to enquire into and investigate the scale of rents now chargeable upon Crown Lands in different parts of the Colony; and to report whether in our opinion the rents now chargeable upon Crown Lands seem to admit of modification, have now to state to your Excellency, that we have enquired into and considered the subjects so referred to us, and have agreed to the following Report:
1. Such portions of Crown Land as are under Lease, and are situate within the City of Victoria, are divided into Marine Lots and Inland Lots. The Marine Lots (with the exception of Lots 20 and 21, and a few others) are now held upon Leases for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, at a uniform annual rent of £40 per quarter acre, and comprise all the leased land between East and West Points abutting on the present Praya, or the harbour, or which, though now left inland by successive recla- mations of the bed of the harbour, formerly abutted upon the original foreshore.
The rent of £40 was fixed by agreement between the Crown and the tenants who contributed to the cost of the Praya, and has been charged upon all Marine Lots alienated since that date.
The Inland Lots comprise all other leased land within the City of Victoria, and in like manner are held upon Leases for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, but at rentals varying according to the situation of the several lots, and of amounts not reducible to any rule.
2. In the early days of the Colony, the lots were submitted to public competition at an upset yearly rental, and the person who offered the highest yearly rent became the lessee. This system of disposing of Crown Leases was afterwards abandoned, and it became the practice for the Governor to determine the rent of each lot, and to declare the amount, when giving notice of the land being open
for lease.
The auction principle was however retained, the Leases were submitted to public competition and the person who offered the highest amount of premium, in addition to the rent, became the lessee. If there were only one applicant, he obtained the Lease for the advertised rent.
More recently, it has become the practice for the Governor to declare a certain amount of premium in addition to the rent, and the lessee is the sole applicant, or the person who offers the greatest advance upon the upset premium.
3. Such portions of Crown Land as are under lease and are situate outside the City of Victoria, are classed as Farm Lots and are held upon Leases for seventy-five years, at rentals determined by the Governor, and varying in amount according to the value of the soil, or the situation of the land, but not reducible to any rule.
4. Besides the lands held upon Lease, some small portions of Crown Lands at a distance from the City, or of small value, or required for temporary purposes, are held under a Licence, renewed from year to year, but revocable at short notice, and at a proportionately low rent.
There are also small portions of land in some of the outlying villages held by those persons, or their descendants, who were in possession when the British first occupied the Island, and have been allowed to retain possession on payment of a small annual rent to the Government.
Holdings of these two classes scarcely come within the scope of the present enquiry, but it would have been improper to pass them over without mention.
5. In the absence of any fixed scale of rent applying to the whole Colony, or even to particular districts, we are unable to offer any opinion as to whether the rents, as originally fixed, were out of proportion to the then value of the land: they are undoubtedly out of all proportion to the present value of many of the lots. But it must be borne in mind, that the rents now chargeable are so by virtue of contracts which the Crown tenants must have thought reasonable when they first entered into them, and we cannot predict that this land will always remain at its present low value. There- fore, it seems to us that any modification of these contracts is admissible, in the case of individuals, only upon proof of exceptional conditions, which have not been caused by the tenants, and from which
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