16
Admiral
ht
17 164
Office
Office
immediate stimulus to purchase—a large increase of price (which, however, as the payments are deferred, is often more apparent than real) and a consequent growth of fictitious or speculative sales for the purpose not of use but resale, causing in the first instance an additional rise, but ultimately an unnatural depreciation of the value of the land. How far sales of this kind took place at Hong Kong may be conjectured from the statement, in the Despatch 1999, that the sales of 49 Lots at a rental of nearly £1,500 were merely fictitious, and when a re-sale was formed were found to be impossible and never completed. It was during this state of things that the present scale of price was fixed by the Land Committee, and we think that the depreciation of property, the abandonment of Land by its Owners—the professed intention of Mr. Stephenson to carry his manufactures to Macao unless he can obtain Land at a rate utterly disproportionate to that required by the present Regulations—and the statement that he can procure suitable buildings at that place at a quarter of the money which would be required.