Hard Lines.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 1458, 18 September 1885, Page 4

Hard Lines.

A writer m TrutU SBys :— lt certainly seems hard that a landlord, who has shown his desire to improve his land by >v allowing more than 17,000 corpses ''to'! be buried m a plot of less than three-! quarters of an acre, should be debarred from getting any further return putpf the property. This, however, was what hns been done m the case of the Peel Grove burial-ground by a decision of Mr Justice Day. The ground m qiipstioii was let as an eligible building estate to a Mr' Chambers. First of all. the local authorities made an unsuccessful attempt to stop the building. Then Parliament stepped m, and, by an Act of last, session, forbade Mr Chambers', or anybody else to build on a .'disused burial-ground. By his agreement, however, Mr Chambers has covenanted with the freeholder to pay £140 a year rent until his houses were put up and leases were granted. As after the Act the houses never could be put up, the free-: holder very logically contended before thfi Court that Mr Chambers must go on paying £140 a year for ever ; and yet Mr Justice Day refused to see it. First of all, a landlord buries his felljnwcreatures twenty or thirty feet deep 'under .the whole of his property, and is stopped by Order m Council from aedomodatingnnv more. He then, proposes to cover tbo surface with desirable residences, and is stopped by an ■ Act of Parliament. He then claims £140 a year tor even for the. right to look at the land, and is defeated m a court or. justice. I hope he will get all the sympathy he deserves.