LI.P. COAL CONTROVERSY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 32, 7 February 1913, Page 8

LI.P. COAL CONTROVERSY

» ■ RESTRICTION IN THE LEASE. The Crown Law Office has submitted to the Prime Minister a report bearing upon the Southland tease-m-perpetuity incident. With regard to this lease, it is alleged that the freehold title, which the Crown is bound to sell at surface value, carries with it the right to mine the coal. Ae^ we have been unable to obtain permission to peruse the report of the Crown Law Office, we are unable ,to criticise it or to submit it to test. We are assured by the Prim& Minister that the following is .the effect of it :— A lease-in-perpetuity granted under section 121 of the Land Act of 1892 (since embodied in the Consolidated Land Act of 1908) reserves the minerals and the right to enter and take them to the Crown. This is the section under which the .Southland land in question was leaded. The lease itself contains 1 the following covenant :— "The lessee shall have no right to any mineral, mineral oil, gas, metal, coal, or valuable stone under the' surface of the iand hereby demised, the surface only of the said land being demised and leased to the lessee, and the right to ingress, egress, and regress reserved to all persons lawfully engaged in t working the said minerals, mineral oil, gas, metal, coal, or affone, is hereby reserved." The Land Laws Amendment Act of last session, the report states, .gives the right to the tenant to acquire, "the fee-simple of the land I comprised in his lease. The lease, acj cording to the covenant, includes only the iurfaco and nothing below the surface. The report of . the Crown Law Office concludes with these' words : "I think that the lessee is entitled to buy -from the Crown, and the Crown is bound to sell to him, the fee-simple of the land comprised in his lease. As minerals are not part of tile land comprised in his lease, but are expressly reserved to the Crown, he is not entitled to purchase the minerals. When he becomes the purchaser of the land comprised in the lease, he does not become the purchaser of the minerals." This last sentence exactly puts the case of the Prime Minister's opponents. They contend that the lessee does not become "the purchaser of the minerals." They say that he becomes the owner of the coal without purchase. The report, it is also stated, draws a, distinction between two kinds of lease-in-perpetuitjr. We have no particulars as to what it says about the other kind.