More than ten years later, the point of
43
24. The Report of the Land Commission 1886-87 however continued
to hold the field as an authoritative pronouncement on the subject
of the 75 year leases.
view expressed in the Report was quoted and adopted in Despatch No.
132 by Secretary of State Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, dated 23rd May,
1898 (already mentioned). In the first of the three paragraphs set
forth above, the Secretary of State says that, in future, leases are
to contain "suitable provisions to meet the objections raised by the
Land Commission of 1886-87, viz., that the Crown should not at the
expiration of leases confiscate the whole value of the tenants!
improvements"
•
25. We place the utmost stress upon these words for they amount
to a complete admission of the force of our argument. In stating
that the Crown should not at the expiration of leases confiscate
the whole value of the tenants' improvements the Secretary of State
abrogated the essentials of the leasehold contract, the essence of which is thus expressed in "The Land Laws" by Sir Frederick Pollock, Professor of Jurisprudence in the University of Oxford (Macmillans,
1883):
26.
"The fundamental assumption of English leasehold tenure is that the lessor is entitled to have back the land at the end of the term in the same condition in which the lessee took it. At the end of the term the b6 become the landlord's property, the rinding hic Zumpunsation in such profit as
1
can make of them during the term."
Having gone so far on behalf of future acclolders the
Secretary of State was morally committed to extend the same consider-
ation to the then-existing 75 year leaseholders. The Government
should not, at the expiry of their term, confiscate the whole value
of their improments, or, what is worse, force them to buy back
the property at its full capital value.
27. We have next
batumenta
the "000 public
med by the Government on various dates. These also clearly show
that insistence upon the letter of leasehold law was not contemplated.
According to the general understanding, the Secretary of
28.
State in 1898 had established the policy of:
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