O OP Y.
Enclosure 3.
15
Extract from the Minute by Mr. B.. H.. J. Gompertz.
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Hon. Colonial Secretary,
Iwo and a half years experience of New Territory land have convinced me that the difficulties of making our own system a working reality over there are so great as to be practically insurmountable at any rate under present conditions.
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There are certainly over a quarter of a million bots in the New Territory and not improbably there may be 300,000. If not more than 3/3 of these Lots are actually taken up this means some 300,000 titles to be made ready and issued ir- mediately. Now there is little doubt that the 5,000 Crown beases required for New Kowloon will be sufficient to keep the Hongkong Land Office fully occupied for two or three years. This however is comparatively a minor detail.
It may be possible to cut down the present Grown Lease to a form almost as simple and as short as the Extract from the Register which forms the voucher of title under my Draft Ordinance (See schedule I).
Immediately however that the holder desires to transfer his interest we see the difficulties begia, It is quite possible that the parties may be competent to dra up for themselves a deed of assignment in Chinese, but after they have done this the requirements of Ordinance III of 1844 have to be complied with. That is to say that the conveyance must be registered. Registration requires the production of an English translation of the instrument and of a Memorial in English to the satisfaction of the Registering Officer. All this is troublesome and perplexing to the lay mind and the Hongkong practice is for a man to go to his Solicitor who charges him say $25.00 - and puts the matter through on his behalf.
In the New Territory however the average value of the boldings is very small. There must be many of thousands of them that would not fetch more than 325.00 if sold
outright. The parties obviously then cannot afford a Solicitor and they will thus either have recourse to unauthorised transla- tors,men of defective education, usually discharged lawyer's clerks of the baser aort: or they will be driven to ignore the law as to Registration altogether laying the way open for frauds and villainies innumerable. I need not lay stress upon the difficulty of collecting Crown Rent on a Rent Roll containing some hundred thousand
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