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but was impracticable for any other purpose. This Land was originally leased by Government at the rate of £18:4:6 per annum, subsequently resumed. The Governor now recommends that the whole lot should be leased to Mr. Scott at the Rent of £5.
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These, we believe, are all the material facts & questions on which we now proceed to report. We begin with the general question of disposing of the Land. The system of disposing of the Land was, as we have observed, to make the amount of Rent the subject of competition at the Public Sale.
Obvious as were the advantages of such a system, in a Colony which, like Hong Kong, must depend for a large portion of its Revenue on the proceeds of the Crown Lands, - Experience has, we think, shown that it had large and countervailing disadvantages. The sale of property at what may be called a Rack-rent is necessarily in the nature of a sale on credit, and it has the consequent disadvantage of Enabling speculators to buy Land not according to their actual capital but according to their anticipations.
The natural results are a great immediate...