Sessional_Paper_1905 — Page 668

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2. It is not necessary for me to discuss the matter of the legality of a claim for compensation when rights granted under a Crown Lease bave been taken away; it is sufficient for me to know that the Governor and his legal advisers who passed the Reclamation Ordinance admitted the obligation of the Crown to compensate, and defined the measure of compensation to be the difference between the value of the Marine Lot and the value of the same land converted into an Inland Lot by the Reclamation in front of it, and promised that the Government would accord the fullest justice in respect of private rights, and that the Attorney General of Hongkong stated before the Full Court on the 30th March, 1898, that our claim would be fairly and rightly considered by the Government even if only morally bound, and that he would have no objection to me making a further claim for loss of rents during the period before the Reclamation Works actually reached the front of our premises.

3. As to Mr. Lyttelton being satisfied that the sum of $24,367 now offered is adequate and equitable, I can only regret that he did not state his reasons for being so satisfied, for it bears no comparison with $172,000, difference in value estimated by Messrs. Leigh & Orange, which estimate is now, according to the actual sales, found to be understated as pointed out in my letter to you of the 16th March last.

4. For the above reasons I am again compelled to ask the reasons put forward by the Hongkong Government against our claim or that the Secretary of State for the Colonies will agree to adopt the course pointed out by Her late Majesty's Government in 1857 and let assessors be appointed on behalf of the Crown and the proprietor of the Mariue Lot to ascertain the amount that should be paid to us, for it is unfair that the settlement should be left to the caprice of one man or set of men interested on one side only who have no special knowledge of adjusting claims for compensation.

5. That we are entitled to know the reasons put forward by the Acting Governor of Hongkong against our claim is, according to Chief Justice Sir John Carrington, beyond doubt, and the necessity of knowing them is emphasized by the same authority in the following quotation

"It was very properly admitted by the Attorney General that if the Governor is indeed an arbitrator under the Ordinance, some of the things which are stated to have been done by the Acting Governor cannot be supported and the Court will be justified in interfering in the exercise of its general jurisdiction over subordinate tribunals.

6. That the Governor is an Arbitrator under the Ordinance is clear from the Award itself, which runs :

"Under the powers conferred upon me by section 7 sub-section 6 of Ordinance 16 of 1889 I hereby award to Messrs. Thomas Howard and M. J. D. Stephens, lessees of Marine Lot No. 184 the sum of $15,000 as and by way of compensation for injury that they have sustained by the Praya Reclamation Works."

7. With regard to this Mr. C. A. Cripps, R.C., M.P., and Mr. Morton W. Smith say :-

"That the Acting Governor in deciding on the claim of your petitioners under the said Ordinance was acting in a judicial capacity and was bound to decide on proper and legal grounds and not in an arbitrary manner and without hearing the case of your petitioners or allowing them to know of, and to answer the case made against them on behalf of the Governor of the said Colony, and therefore on the admitted facts the said Chief Justice should have set aside the Award."

8. This view is emphatically laid down by Lord Eldon in the following

words:

"By the great principles of eternal justice which is prior to all these acts of sederunt regulations and proceedings of Court, it is impossible that an Award can stand where the arbitrator hears one party and refuses to hear the other.”