PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.882
Reference :-
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
Appendix F F.
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accrue to the Imperial Government. This contention assumes as a principle that public property in use, from which benefit had accrued to the Indian Government, was, ander the circumstances, to be transferred free of charge. Now without repeating and only referring to the description of these stores given above by the Committee of Valdation of 1868, and sanctioned by the representative of the Indian Government at that valuation, it is submitted that this principle is peculiarly applicable to these armaments.
III. It is submitted that the course adopted by the Imperial Government on with- drawing from the milltary occupation of Colonies, ought to be looked at as supplying a principle applicable to this case. The Imperial Government within the last few years has withdrawn from the military occupation of several Colonies, among others of New South Wales, Tasmania, and Canada, and the policy to be followed by the War Depart- ment on such occasions, has received careful consideration.
The course adopted is explained in the following extract from a letter 'addressed by the War Office to the Colonial Office on this subject :-
"The following course has been adopted by the War Department on the occasion of the withdrawal of Imperial troops from British Colonies.
"The barracks and fortifications finally vacated by the Imperial troops, together with the landed property of the War Department attached to them, as also the armaments of the fortifications, viz., the guns, carriages, ammunition, and other stores forming their equipments, have been handed over to the Colonies free of charge, subject only to the condition that if, at any future period, troops are sent to the Colonies at the request of the Colonial Government, or in furtherance of Colonial interests, the Colonies will be expected to provide them with 'barracks or lodgings to the satisfaction of Her Majesty's Government.
"It has also been the practice to give the Colonies the option of purchasing, at fair and reasonable rates to be agreed upon by joint representatives of the Imperial and Colonial Governments, any articles which the Colonies may be desirous of obtaining from the War Department stores on those terms."
This course is appealed to as expressing the deliberate judgment of the Imperial Government that it would be inequitable suddenly, and without Imperial aid, to throw upon a dependency the charge of arming fortifications which have been erected indepen- dently of the consent of the dependency, and not merely for the interests of the depen- dency, but for that of the Empire. And it is submitted that if this principle is held to apply between the Imperial Government and such Colonies as New South Wales, Tasmania, and Canada, it is peculiarly applicable between the Indian Government and the Straits Settlements, when the policy is borne in mind, by which, to use the language of the official report already quoted, the hills and shores of Singapore were covered with barracks, redoubts, batteries, and magazines. It is therefore conceived that, if the Straits Settlements stood merely on the same footing in regard to the Indian Government as the Colonies occupy
in regard to the Imperial Government, the Straits Settlements might confidently claim, in accordance with the principle and practice established by the Imperial Government, to retain free of charge a portion, at any rate, if not the whole, of the armaments and stores in dispute. But the difference between the relative positions of the Straits Settlements in regard to the Indian Government, and of the Cólonies in regard to the Imperial Government places the claim of the Straits on even higher and surer ground, The Imperial Governuient hands over to the Colonies free of charge armaments and stores, to the purchase of which the Colonies have not contributed one farthing, while the Straits Settlements claim to retain free of charge armaments and stores, provided irrespective of local interests, but towards the purchase of which the revenues of the Settlements have contributed no inconsiderable share.
IV. The arguments in the last two paragraphs, II and III, apply with especial force to the portion of the armaments and stores in arbitration, described as the guns upon the fortifications with their equipments; but it is submitted that the principle appealed to in the arguments apply, also, to such other of the armaments and stores as may not come strictly within that description.
It has already been submitted that the Settlements have concurrent rights with the Indian Government in all stores charged against the fund produced by mixing the reventles of the Settlement with other moneys administered by that Government. And it is now further submitted, upon the principles above appealed to, that the equitable settlement desired by the Secretary of State for India, of the unadjusted accounts between the two Departments consequent on the transfer of Straits Settlements to the Colonial Office, will, so far as respects the Ordnance stores, best be realized by holding that all arniamenté and stores brought by the Indian Government into the Settlements defore
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the transfer, and by any act of that Government incorporated with the military establish- ment of the Settlements, ought to pass with the Settlements as part of their public property.
Accordingly, the Colonial Office prays the Arbitrator to decide that there is no ground. for the liability sought to be imposed by the India Office on the Colony of the Straits Settlements, but that the Colony is entitled to retain, free of charge, the Armaments and Stores which form the subject of this arbitration.
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