390
- the peculiar advantages under which people are permitted to settle here, and the material fact that the tenure required no expenditure of purchase money in advance).
An equalization of land rents is wholly impracticable; the very idea of it would be scouted as absurd in the extreme). Parties, therefore, subject to an annual rent at the formation of the Colony has, I believe, been strictly fulfilled; while the Civil Establishments were placed upon a more extensive scale than would have been the case but for the indications of commercial prosperity which the result of these sales must have been the means of producing.
Great caution should be used in dealing with the cases which have been noticed by the Committee, so as to prevent the creation of a dangerous precedent: Some of these must simply be reminded of the fact that their bargains were deliberately effected under a system of public competition which, in common fairness to all parties, ought to be inviolable. Land would not have been bought at the time either unnecessarily or for more than its prospective value, notwithstanding all that has been urged with respect to the interference of land jobbers; and, if the prospects under which these purchases were effected have not been realized, no degradation is attributable to the Government, because every obligation contemplated has been fulfilled.
But I cannot see how they could be relieved without disturbing the general principles of tenure, and thus give rise to endless difficulties of a serious nature. I would rather recommend an adherence to the present system in the belief that it is better to let things come to their proper level in the natural course of events, than to force them by the ...