To this minute, which was dated the twenty-second of July, 1862, the Duke of Newcastle replied in a despatch of the ninth of August, following. He expressed regret that he could not concur in the views of the government. The main questions which the commissioners were appointed to decide were: first, at what rate tenants ought to be allowed to acquire freehold interests in their property; and, next, what amount of arrears of rent should be remitted by the landlords. On the first and most important of these questions, the commissioners professed themselves unable to come to any conclusion, and, instead of deciding it, they recommended, virtually, that it should be decided by other arbitrators, to be hereafter nominated. This, however, he said, was not what they were charged to do: they were authorized by the proprietors to make an award themselves, but they were not authorized to transfer the duty of making that award to others. The trust confided to them was a personal one. The proprietors relied on the skill, knowledge, and fairness of the three gentlemen appointed in 1860; and they could not, therefore, be called upon, in deference to these gentlemen’s opinion, to confide their interests even to arbitrators specially designated in the award, much less to persons whose very mode of appointment was undetermined by it. This objection might be waived by the proprietors, but it was not waived; and being insisted on, the colonial secretary said he was obliged to admit that it was conclusive, and he was bound further to say that it was, in his opinion, an objection founded, not on any technical rule of law, but on a sound and indisputable principle of justice,—the principle, namely, that a person who has voluntarily submitted his case to the decision of one man, cannot, therefore, be compelled, without his consent, to transfer it to the decision of another.
For these reasons, the colonial minister did not advise Her Majesty to sanction the two acts which had been forwarded, and which were, of course, intended to render the award obligatory on all who had consented to the reference. The report of the commissioners was therefore regarded by the home government simply as an expression of opinion which was not binding, and which ought not to be allowed to stand in the way of any other proposal which promised an amicable settlement of the question.