CO129-261 - Public Offices & Others - 1893 — Page 182

Prference when Parliament mucets

again

?

5.4.9.28/10/93

"We are not likely to gain meech by it - Sa minutis in

308

93

AS 31/10

In Johusm

The War Office

Dive

proposing

Treasury

to accept a cudain

anagement

which is contodeid.

in printe Notes

belemm to Way fired and Sir Arthur

Haliburton

I heard the Caller puss m

Qu

des wo

Today

Fu R.

!

Administration of Colonial Military Crown Lands.

in order to keep the discussion on the administration of Colonial military Crown lands within reasonable limits, it is desirable to exclude from considera- tion all matters which are not essential to a decision on the question.

1. Much has been written on the subject of submitting the matter to the Law Officers and of the form such submission should take. It having been decided by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a reference to the Law Officers is unnecessary, all that refers to that branch of the subject might well be omitted from consideration.

180

2. There has been much dispute as to what the Committee intended when Paragraph 56, Report it recommended that

of Com-

Colonial

"All such military properties and their values should be treated as part of a capital mittee on "sum devoted to defensive purposes, and that, when they are disposed of by sale, or by "transfer to the Civil Government, their realized, or estimated, value, should as hercin Military "after detailed be retained by the Colonial Governments and held by them available Lands and Building.. "towards the provision of such other lands and buildings as it may subsequently be "necessary to acquire for defensive purposes ————”

and what the Government meant when it approved that recommendation. Whether the Committee and the late Government really meant what the paragraph above quoted seems to imply, viz., that the" realized or estimated value" of surrendered lands should be made available for the provision of other properties required for defence, or whether they only meant that the value of the right of user for military purposes, which never could be sold, and which, therefore, never could be realized, should alone be made available need not now be discussed. The Colonial Office, though it enforced the literal interpretation of the above- quoted clause in the case of Mauritius by requiring it to contribute the full fee- simple value realized by the sale of the military hospital at Port Louis towards the cost of new barracks at Curepipe, now insists that the approved recommen- dation of the Committee had a much more restricted meaning, and that the value of the right of user should alone be made available in future cases.

The question for discussion, therefore, is not what the Committee meant, nor what the late Government meant, but what policy shall now be adopted to give practical effect to paragraph 54 of the above-quoted report, which states--

"The military authorities acting on behalf of the Secretary of State should there- "fore, in communication with the Colonial Governments, deal with Colonial lands and "buildings in such a manner as may best secure——

"1. The efficient execution of the special services to which the lands and

buildings are devoted.

2. The general interests of the Colony."

3. All questions of the title under which the Secretary of State for War holds Colonial military Crown lands may also be excluded from consideration. The War Office does not now claim any legal right to dispose of such lands, whether held under deeds (except in the case of actual purchase), under Local Government Ordinances, or by mere possession acquired on the forma- tion of the Colony. It only holds them in trust for the defence of the Colony,