OUR LANDS—LEASING v. SELLING.

Marlborough Express, Volume XVI, Issue 292, 15 December 1881, Page 2

OUR LANDS— LEASING v. SELLING.

I The following interesting letter appeared m a recent issue of the Melbourne "Age":- --! The Corporation of Liverpool is a gigantic owner of houses and city lands. At a very early stage of its existence it adopted the wise policy of purchasing the fee-simple* of town and suburban lands, and leasing them out m building plots for three lives and twenty-one years. Exi perieuce has proved that this term is equivalent to seventy-live years. Therefore, the leases are now for seventy-five years. They are purchased right out for a' capital sum down, like a fee simple, with certain stipulations as to fines for renewals. Otherwise, I think, there are no restrictions, except m special instances, like the Sefton Park, where the character of the houses is prescribed. This was an i estate of 150 acres, abouteitjht miles from \ the centre of the city, which tno Liverpool Corporation purchased a few years ago from the Earl of Sefton, for £500 per | acre,; and converted, !at ; . an immense outlay, into a pleasure park, with ornamental waters, etc., reserving certain portions for building leases. But wherever they can buy up a ten or a twenty-acre block m the neighbourhood, which they think can at some future day come m for building, they purchase it ; the result being that ♦•he wealth of the Liverpool Corpoiation from this source is immense and con- j tinually increasing. The costly improve- ' ments that have been effected thereby m Liverpool are a marvel. It would be well for our if the Melbourne Corporation- were to follow the successful example of that m Liverpool. On the same ground would it not be better to lease than sell the remnant of our national domain ? I remember that when the late Mr Swinton Boner, the then head of the grand old Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Company, as well as beiug the leading man of his day of the British insurance world, and a great authority on all such fiscal matters, was m Melbourne twenty-livo years ag«, ho was loud, very loud, m favor of leasing instead of selling our lands. Of course ho had an intimate experience of the Liverpool Corporation.