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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5381, 26 June 1878, Page 2

If the sale of the Court House property on Lambton-quay, which realised at auction yesterday by Mr. Duncan some £153 per foot, be a teat of the value of land in Wellington, as we may fairly assume that it is, not only the owners of real property in the city, but the community generally, may be congratulated on the fact, for it shows the confidence which capitalists feel in the future of the place. For some time past there has been a rapid rise in the price of city lands, which has suffered no depreciation in consequence of the quantity placed in the market, but, on the contrary, has still an upward tendency. A few years ago the rates which are now ruling for real properties in the city would have been considered absurd. But the facts that they are readily obtained, and that the demand for town lots is in excess of the supply, are beyond dispute. The reclamation of the Te Aro foreshore will to some extent meet the demand, but there is no reason to anticipate a fall in prices of city lands on that account; for it the population and trade of Wellington continue to increase during the next few years as it has done in the past four, of which there appears to be every probability, all the available land which will be brought into the market by the proposed reclamation will be insufficient for the commercial portion of the community, to whom -flat land situated near the harbor is almost a necessity. The want of a new Court House has been so often discussed that it is needless to repeat the arguments used in support of a proposition which, indeed, is self-evident to any one who has visited the scanty apartments hitherto devoted to the administration of justice hero ; and now that a capital price has been obtained for the old site, it is to be hoped that as little delay as possible will take place before ample accommodation for the Bench, the Bar, and the public is afforded in a new and appropriate building as centrally situated as the necessities of the case will permit. We shall probably be semi-officially informed to-day that the general rise in the value of city property is traceable directly and distinctly to the accession of the present Government to office, and to the remarkable enthusiasm and confidence which the name of Sir George Grey inspires in the minds of his friends the capitalists ; and we may also expect to be told that the presence of the Honorable Colonial Secretary at the sale yesterday had an exhilarating effect upon prices. There is no reason whatever, that we know of, why the exercise of such mesmeric influence on the money market should be confined to the Premier and the ex-Colo-nial Treasurer, Mr. Larnach. Much as we rejoice at the evidence which this sale affords of the confidence felt in the future of this city, we cannot help feeling and saying that it was a mistake on the part of the Government to sell the property at all. Sixteen thousand pounds appears a large sum ; but a Minister on the stump, in Westland for example, would undertake to spend twice that sum in a morning in order to inspire confidence into the liberal electors of the district, and would contrive to find the money, too, if pressed by ardent admirers. The excuse of poverty is therefore not available. It has been the faults of all the Governments, Provincial as well as General, in this colony, that they have not had regard for the future wants of the Crown, in the shape of land, in the several centres of population, and that every rood available has either been alienated as endowments for this or that purpose, or recklessly sold for the sake of immediate revenue. When it has been necessary afterwards to find land for public purposes it has had to be bought back again at enormously enhanced prices. The necessity for the erection of a new Supreme Court is no doubt urgent; but the building which has been sold is, by situation and otherwise, most suitable for a Resident Magistrate’s Court and PolioeDepartment, and, after the Supreme Court shall have been housed elswhere, might very conveniently have been used in that way. When the cost of the new buildings for the local courts and for accommodation for the police has been ascertained, it will bo found that if deducted from the sum produced by the late sale the total would be so seriously reduced as to make the alienation of the property seem not such a very desirable transaction financially as it now does, and the objection which we take to this sort of denudation of itself by Government in the matter of land would be felt to have greater force.