Siz Edmund Hornby's lucid judgment in the Recreation Ground case thoroughly exhausts the subject, that it would be redundant for us to attempt to go again over the ground. The whole history was, in fact, more familiar to most local readers than to the Counsel who were laboriously evolying facts in Court, from scraps of documentary evidence and the somewhat dormant memory of individuals. The case really lay in a nut-shell. The old' Race Course was sold because the Settlement was encroaching on it; and anew one was bought under careful precaution that no such contingency should again interfere with its location. Racing men only wanted a circle; but they took the precaution, in buying that circle, to bind the native owners of the interior not to build houses which should interfere with their view, and to secure the right of pre-emption in case the Jatter should sell their and. Partly because it was convenient to collocate Recreation Grounds, partly because they could get this inside land cheap—the newly created Recreation Fund bought this interior for Tis, 25 a mow, subject to the further condition that: they should pay an additional Tls. 125 a mow to the native owners if ever the land were used for purposes of speculation. Both sides were thus protected: The Chinese, who were induced by the Taotai to sell their land cheaply for the sole purpose of recreation, protected themselves by stipulating for the balance' of the higher price to which it would" have been forced up by a speculative demand, in case the original design should be violated; while the Race people had protected themselves, by stipulating against the erection of any obstacle that could interfere with their object of acleer view. The Recreation Fund, in Court, admitted the former obligation but denied the latter; and sustained their right to do what they chose with their land, subject only to the contingency of having to pay Tls. 125 8 mow extra, in case they built on- or other+ wise used it for purposes of speculation. The Race Club emplidtically denied this position, maintaining that the ori-' ginal stipulation against houses' was binding and absolute;—and, hence the fight.
'The query—whother it is reason: able to suppose that people who had bought land for a certain purpose, and had taken pains to protect themselves in its enjoyment, would' wilfully tear up their precautions, and allow new owners to acquire, free of obligation, other land over which they had acquired pre-emptor rights with the especial purpose of enforcing such obligation—would, alone, almost suffice to establish the Race Club's position in the eyes of reasonable men. Something more, however, than presumption was required in a Court of Law; but what was necessary even there has been equally forthcoming. We dare not pretend to say whether Sir Edmund Hornby's exhaustive judgment is proof, at a points, against the "ferret vision" of lawyers; but we do say that it will convince every unbiased reader; and we unhesitatingly endorse his affirmation that, in deciding as he did decide,—that the balance of evidence was in favour of the pretension put forward by the Race Club—he has taken "not only a legal view of the rights and obligations of all parties,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.