THE COURTHOUSE SITE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8446, 22 May 1907, Page 5

THE COURTHOUSE SITE.

THE QUESTION OF EXCHANGE.

(To the Editor). Sir, —Your leading article of Monday opens up an aspect of exceeding importance in connection with the Courthouse site exchange question, and one that is entirely new to the Masterton public. It is obvious that • the Masterton Trustees Empowering Act of 1902 could only have been passed as the result of an actual agreement with the Crown to exchange the two sites upon equal terms. Five years ' ago, when the Act was passed, the two sites were of equal value. On the one hand the recent great rise in Queen Street values had not taken place; on the other hand, Lincoln Road was then, or had until recently been, the habitual, if not the only, road to the railway station, and the Chapel Street corner was undoubtedly considered to be at least equal in value to, say, the Masterton Implement Company corner, opposite the Loan and Mercantile. Since 1902, however,-the values have relatively changed, and if a deal were .to be made now there is no doiahiihat the Crown would have to refle&Ke.a considerable sum. But that is i>ot tthe point. ~ ""he jpoint is that the deal \ s iobvjously concluded—except as-.' to Mere legal formalities—immediately the ratepayers, at a poll taken as provideed by the statute, approved <otf tfthe exchange. Why the transaction cwas not formally completed at if&e time Ido not know. But the janfontunate fact that it was | not then foriaally completed affords no reason why the Government should refuse (to ..complete it now. If two people make san agreement to exchange and it subsequently appears that one man has got the better of the bargain, tifoat affords no reason for the other man te> jnefuse to complete the conveyance. If this exchange upon equal iterms had not been in fact previously agreed upon it is absurd ifco suppose that the Minister for justice would have permitted the Bill to pass into law in the form in which it actually did pass into law. I venture to predict that if the correspondence between the Justice Department and the Trust and also the minutes of the proceedings at the time are turned up, it will appear somewhere upon record that there was an actual agreement made for the exejhange, upon equal terms, before the Trust went to the .expense of framing and circulating the Bill, and that it was in full reliance upon the good faith of the Government that the Trustees went to the expense of taking tfee poll.

I do not think that the Government are at present conscious that they are in any way wronging the Trust. The true position has obviously been overlooked by the manager"! of the transaction on the Trust side, and if it was overlooked on that side, there is every excuse for the Government not appreciating the true position. What is required is that the true position should be put to the Government immediately, in the hope that if this is done the agreement upon which the statute is based* will be carried out without demur. If, after this is done, the Government decline to carry out the exchange, then it will be the duty of the Trustees to get the legal position defined. While it is premature to go into the legal position, and in any event improper and embarrassing to discuss that position in the columns of the press, I say without hesitation now that it is quite on the cards that proper enquiry may disclose that the Trust has some legal standing in the matter. The question is of paramount importance to the Trust, and it is to be hoped that at the coming election Trustees will be elected who are pledged to push the matter to the utmost with a view of effecting the exchange upon equal terms in accordance with the agreement—in fact, if not in law — that must have been made in 1902. —I am, etc.,

H. C. ROBINSON,