But the great grievance of the merchants was that the conditions of Captain Elliot's sales of land had not been fulfilled by the Government, and that merchants who, trusting in the good faith of the Government, had bought land and expended large sums on buildings in the expectation to have a permanent property at an annual quit rent, did not get the land granted to them in perpetuity but were peremptorily called upon to take leases of 75 years only or to surrender their land. There were minor complaints, that some of the sales of January, 1844, were fictitious, that there was a great deal of deception practised in the purchase of land in 1840 and 1844 by parties who bought land without really intending to hold it, and that such practices had been encouraged by negligence on the pare of the Government in enforcing the conditions of sale and in collecting the land rents. The Colonial Treasurer (R. M. Martin) collaborated some of these statements by the allegation he made that, out of the whole amount of land-sales from June 1841 to June 1844, amounting to £3,224 per annum, only £641 had actually been paid. Land jobbing, in fact, was at that early time already one of the great evils of Hongkong. But it was not confined to merchants only, for the same Colonial Treasurer alleged that, with the exception of the Attorney General (P. J. Stirling) and himself, almost every individual connected with the Government was identified with the purchase and sale of building land in the Colony. In fact it is evident that the land sales of 1843 and 1844 gave rise to the first local outburst of the gambling mania. 'Men of straw,' said Mr. A. Matheson, 'gambled in land and raised the price of it upon those people who were bonâ fide purchasers.'
Proceeding on the legally correct but historically false and unjust assumption that the lawful land tenure of Hongkong dated from the exchange of treaty ratifications, the Secretary of State had laid down the following principles as a basis for the future land policy of the Government, (1) that the Governor should abstain fron alienating any land for any time greater than might be necessary to induce tenants to erect substantial
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