defaulter-
That I am not personally liable to such an exaction must, I think be admitted when it is recollected that the premises are presented and paid for by the respective officers of Ordnance_ at the rate of £500 per place of business for the Commissariat; while my own share of the occupation is limited by Her Majesty's Regulations to a mere sectional part for which I am charged only £20 or a twenty-fifth of the whole rental.
But even as a claim of the Local against the Home Government, I submit that it is utterly inadmissible—there is not, I believe, the shadow of a precedent for it either in this or other Colony. Buildings occupied as Barracks or otherwise for and on behalf of Her Majesty's Troops "have always a prescriptive right to exemption from local rates; and it would seem only fair to conclude that this right extends also to Buildings hired by the Crown as the difference between them and actual Crown property is a question simply of duration or expense with reference to such rates which, if even levied upon the Landlord, would have to be paid indirectly by the Crown in the shape of increased rental.
This conclusion is, I think, borne out by the fact that no exaction of local rates has ever before been made. We have been taught that under the ordinance referred to in the Call it was unnecessary or superfluous to provide specifically for their exemption in cases of such buildings; and if so, it does appear in the highest degree unreasonable that the absence of such specification should now be advanced by the Attorney General as a negative ground for this novel-