No. 61, Miscellaneous

I have the honor to transmit for your information and consideration
copies of a Procalmation under which Crown Lands have been disposed
of in this Colony, and which is still in force subject to the
modifications contained in the accompanying Gazette notices dated
29th July 1864 respectively.

I also transmit copies of certain queries which I addressed to a
Board of Officers appointed to inquire into this subject with their
replies thereto, and the opinion of the Acting Attorney General on a
specific question submitted to him.

I have deferred troubling you with this question in the hope that the
local Legislature would accept the management of the Crown Lands of
the Colony on the terms proposed to them in the Duke of Newcastle's
Separate Despatch dated 15th June 1863, and provide a legal remedy
for the evils which obviously and admittedly exist.

A persusal of the Proclamation with the accompanying documents will I
think disclose evils of no ordinary kind, calculated to effect great
injury to the future as it undoubtedly is to the present progress of
the Colony.

The practical working of the Proclamation may be shortly stated as
follows:

1st It has retarded and obstructed the settlement of the Public
Lands of the Colony.

2nd It has alienated 118,506 acres of the cream of the Public Lands,
for a consideration of $13,805 of which only 23,629 acres are in part
occupied, a large portion of which is unimproved and uncultivated.

3rd It enables a pre-emptor of 100 acres to take up any further
quantity of unoccupied land without any conditions of occupation or
improvement whatever.

4th It has encouraged land speculation and discouraged settlement
and locked up the best lands of the Colony in the hands of speculators
who pay neither rent nor taxes for it.

The foregoing are among the most obvious evils resulting from this,
in my opinion, very injudicious Proclamation, but innumerable minor
evils flow from it which call for remedies which the existing
complications on the subject of Crown Lands prevent me from applying
while the local Legislature decline to accept the responsibility of
their management.

You will observe from the Gazette notices of the 29th July 1864 that
I have limited the operation of the "Land Proclamation 1862" to
certain Districts.

This measure was rendered necessary on the discovery of gold to
prevent further speculation and monopoly of Crown Lands in the
neighbourhood of those discoveries.

I fear that Certificates of Improvement under Section XIX of the
Proclamation have been very loosely issued and upon wholly
insufficient grounds for the purpose of enabling the original
pre-emptor to "sell, mortgage or lease" his lands under the terms of
Section XX.

There existed a large arrear of purchase money under Section XXI
until a recent period when I enforced payment.

I entertain no doubt that a large portion of the 118,506 acres
pre-empted are forfeited under the conditions of Sections XXVI, XXVII
and XXVIII, but I cannot learn that any sufficient steps have been
taken in this direction.

The Legislative Assembly has declined to make any provision for "Land
Recorders" in the Districts or for a Surveyor General, thus limiting
the staff of Surveyors to one Assistant Surveyor General who is
wholly unequal to fulfil the numerous duties properly devolving upon
him.

Connected with this question there are boundaries unsettled which
will lead to future confusion and litigation and Indian Reserves and
claims undefined and unadjusted, for the doing of which neither
machinery nor means are at my disposal.

Any unauthorized action on my part might possibly under certain
contingencies create more serious complications, than those which
already exist, and I therefore think it better to await your
instructions on a subject which requires careful consideration.