587
2. This investigation, I submit, has not been properly carried out, and is incomplete because it does not show how depreciation has been arrived at, uor does it take into consideration the depreciation on the Buildings and the loss of intermediate rents as promised by the Attorney General before the Full Court on the 30th March, 1898.
3. As you are aware, Sir Henry Blake was not Governor of Hongkong on the 9th February, 1904, when this statement of depreciation was dated, and, had he been so, it is not likely that he would have proposed such an inadequate sum as compensation, seeing that on the 21st August, 1899, during his regime, and after the award of $15,000 by the Acting Governor, Major-General Black, the Hongkong Government offered to allow us to come into the Reclamation Scheme and put us in the same position as if we had originally come in, the acceptance of which offer would have given us the new Reclamation which has recently sold for $133,500.
4. We did not accept this offer for the reason that the profit on the 15,200 feet of the reclaimed land would not cover the loss on the 32,481 feet of our old Lot and the buildings thereon, and Governor Des Voeux bad promised that the Government would accord the fullest justice in respect of the private rights of dissentient Lot Holders, the admitted obligation of the Crown being to compensate for the difference in value of the Marine Lot and the same land converted into an Inland Lot by the Reclamation in front of it.
5. This view of what the Government would do was also held by the At- torney General, as will be seen from his statement before the Full Court on the 30th March, 1898, which reads as follows:-" Certainly at the present time the Government had never said it would not take into consideration and fairly and rightly, even if only morally bound, decide as to any damage which might have occurred to Mr. Howard's premises in consequence of the Reclamation Works." He further stated that he "would have no objection to his making such further claim as he could substantiate for intermediate damage (loss of rents) caused by the alleged silting up of his foreshore during the period before the Reclamation works actually reached the front of his premises."
6. Besides, we had before us the obiter dictum of Justice Fielding Clarke that "the greatest care should be exercised that no injury be inflicted without adequate compensation", and this was endorsed by Chief Justice Sir John Carrington, with the remark: "Although the legal right is taken away, yet it cannot but be a point of honour with the Governor to pay full regard to the moral right." We had also before us the instructions of Her late Majesty's Government to the Colonial Government in 1857 that, "a sense of justice requires that the equitable claim of the holders of the original Marine Lots should be liberally considered."
7. As the Hongkong Government has not shewn how the depreciation of 75 cents per foot has been arrived at, it remains for me to shew that it is not even an approximate value for depreciation, and to this end I will begin as far back as the 22nd November, 1887, when Governor Des Voeux, through the Colonial Secretary, wrote us that we would be paid the sum of $1,700 for 339 square feet of the land taken away from our Marine Lot No. 184, by order of the Court, which sum he is informed is a very full market value for the land in question. This gives a fract- ion of over $5 per foot.
8. Confirmatory of this valuation I may mention that on the 3rd May, 1888, we had an offer of $200,000 for Marine Lot 184, and as the buildings cost $36,000 the value of this land would be $164,000, which is a fraction over $5 per foot.
9. On the 19th September, 1899, when the Lot had been depreciated by the Reclamation in front of it, Messrs. Palmer & Turner, Architects and Surveyors, made a report and valuation for an intending purchaser, and gave the value of the land at $1.50 per foot. Thus the depreciation since Governor Des Voeux's
valuation was $3.50 per foot.
10. On the 28th December, 1898, Messrs. Leigh & Orange, Architects and Surveyors, formerly in the Government Service, and well acquainted with the value of land and buildings in the Colony, whether as Marine Lots or as Inland