3
Colonial Government in 1898 would appear to have held that the law
of leasehold should apply in Hong Kong as elsewhere".
12
Major-General
Flack, in his remarks, anticipated the policy laid down by Secretary Harcourt in 1915 as set forth in para. 12 of the Financial Secretary's comments renewal at a fair rent. In so deciding Mr. Harcourt
destroyed the rigid common law interpretation of the seventy-five
year Crown leases.
11.
This
We strongly contest the Financial Secretary's assumption that the approved method" lately quoted to individual applicants
for renewals accurately fulfils the terms of the reply given to Mr.
H.W.Bird in the Legislative Council on the 14th May, 1925.
reply proposed to grant to applicants "a new lease for 75 years at
the current rate of Crown rent for the particular locality, renew-
able for a further period of 75 years at a re-assessed Crown rent,
and subject also to a renewal fine". The "approved method"
proposes a new lease back-dated to the date of the criginal lease, thereby in effect giving only an additional term of a single 75 years. Had this been the meaning of the reply to Mr. Bird it appears to us that the words used should have been "a new lease for 75 years but back-dated to the date of the original lease".
In
12. We are unable to follow the Financial Secretary's argument
in paras. 11 & 13 and summarised in para. 18 of his comments.
para. 11 the Financial Secretary states that two special conditions
were to be assured to post-1898 leaseholders, namely, (1) a renewal
for a second 75 years and (2) compensation if the land be resumed
by the Government. These conditions, he adds, are contained in the
renewal clause which he quotes at the top of page 8.
13. But the renewal clause sets forth condition (1) only and
says nothing about (2) compensation on resumption. This second
condition undoubtedly appears elsewhere in the lease but it is also
included in identical terms in the non-renewablo 5 year
leases. How then can the Financial Secretary argue, as he does in
para. 18, that the "fundamental difference between" the two types of
lease is that, in the case of the 75 year leases, if the lots are