A ONE-SIDED ARRANGEMENT.

Marlborough Express, Volume III, Issue 147, 5 December 1868, Page 4

A ONE-SIDED ARRANGEMENT.

To the Editor of the Marlborough Express. Sir, —Permit me through the medium of your columns to call the attention of the public to the “Crown Land Sales Extortion Prevention Act 1866. The preamble sets forth very clearly that the object of the Act is to prevent persons from extorting monejj, from bone-fide intending purchasers of Crqph Lands, and to provide a remedy for such as hjj#e been or may be injured thereby. , The Act that every person who shall offer or propose to receive any consideration to abstain from bidding or purchasing at a sale of Crown Land by auction or otherwise, shall be guilty Of a misdemeanor, and liable on conviction thereof to be fined any sum not exceeding .£2OO, or be imprisoned with or without hard labor for any term not exceeding onyear. And that any person who receives such cone sideratlon is also guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction, liable to be fined any siim not exceeding £SOO, or to be imprisoned with or without hard labor for any term not exceeding two yeat-s. : And further, that any person from whom money, shall have been so extorted may recover the same by an action for money had and received. While therefore, the Act is very stringent as against the person who offers to receive, or actually receives the consideration, it appears not only * to hold the party paying, harmless, but to view him as an injured man, and enables him to recover bis money, and .thereby to evade, ’ honest competition, and cause the province to lose part of the value of her lands; unless, indeed, the person offering the money is held guilty at law of inducing to commits misdemeanor. which does not seem unlikely. Butin any case where there is'collusion the province must suffer; for supposing the one, of two bona fide Intending purchasers, who ultimately proves the purchaser ot Crown land, to have bought the other off at his own suggestion, the purchaser would not have broken the law. And supposing the purchaser to

have made the offer, although he may be guilty of inducin o, the former to commit an misdemeanor and punishable accordingly, the Act does not make a sale under such circumstances illegal; so that whatever fine or imprisonment may be inflicted, the Province would lose by the transaction. 1 am, &c., Justitia.