Colonial Despatches

I have to acknowledge your Letter of the 27th ultimo enclosing an application from Mr John Irving to be allowed to give up certain lands which he had purchased in Van Couvers Island and to receive back the deposit he had paid for them.

2. It appears that in December 1859 Mr Irving appliedto to purchase 200 acres in the North Saanich district at the then upset price of £1 an acre and obtained an allotment of 159 acres, on account of which he paid down £50. Subsequently, at the instance of the House of Assembly and Legislative Council, the price of Government Country lands was (in February 1861) reduced to 4s/2d an acre.

3. Mr Irving pleads that this measure operates to the detriment of purchasers at £1 an acre, and claims that the Government shouldrestore restore the £50 he has paid, and resume the land.

4. It is plain that the reduction in the price of land must injuriously affect the previous purchasers—nevertheless I do not see how this claim can be admitted without establishing a principle and a precedent of a wide application and pregnant with consequences injurious to the public interests. If the application be granted others could not be refused. The whole land transactions of the Colony would thus become unsettled andthe the Colonial Government might be involved in liabilities beyond its ability to meet.

5. In all dealings of this kind the purchaser, as it appears to me, must be held to take the land under the circumstances of the moment, and subject to the contingencies and implied conditions legitimately attaching to it. One of these contingencies obviously is (especially in a new Country) the liability to such changes in the land granting system as the general welfare of the Colony may demand.

6. Had the change in questiontaken taken an opposite direction Mr Irving would not have felt called on to tender and would doubtless have resisted any claim for payment of the increased price.

7. All, I think, that could properly be conceded to Mr Irving is to allow him to select 50 acres of his allotment for the £50 he has actually paid, and to relieve him from his liability to complete the rest of his contract.