9.
26
"permit could have been enforced as of right if
"the land in question had not been resumed."
(d) "Subject to the provisions of Section 11 of the
*principal Ordinance and to the provisions of para-
"graphs B and C of this Ordinance the value of the
"land resumed shall be taken to be the amount which
"the land if sold in the open market might be ex-
"pected to realise."
The Boards of Arbitration have taken the view that Sub-
sections (b) and (c) compel them to value the land as
agricultural land; in other words as if the land could
have been used for no other purpose but that of agricul-
ture. Thus making Sub-section (d) inoperative. There is
no appeal from the Boards. It follows that the landhold-
ors' interests have been reduced by legislative action
from the comparatively extensive estate described in the
New Territories Titles Ordinance,to a mere licence to
cultivate the surface.
That this amounts to expropriation in breach of the Con-
vention.
10.
That the result is that in a number of cases it has actu-
ally happened, that Landholders who at the time of Resumption had
recently purchased their holdings,have been awarded as compensation
a fraction of what they had actually paid for the property. Nor
will it be disputed by the Government that in the developing dis-
tricts land has freely been bought and sold at many times the fi-
gures allowed by the boards; both Vendors and Purchasers believing
that licences to build would be obtained without difficulty at an
increased Grown Rent.
11.
That a man might in the morning be the owner of a plot
of land which he could sell at any time for twenty cents & foot or
more,and that by the same evening by the service of a resumption
7.
notice
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