MINERAL ROYALTIES
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Mineral royalties are not a tax or tribute, but a form of sale. A colliery company may acquire coal measures by buying the land outright, but in this case it is buying a pig in a poke, and may be paying good money for minerals. that may in the end prove unworkable or unremunerative, leaving the company burdened with a piece of useless property the value of which will have been depreciated by their own exposure of its worthlessness. The royalty system enables the company to purchase only what is of use to it, while leaving it free to get out of a bad bargain. The landowner is paid piecemeal and according to results, instead of in bulk, and he has no power to close nor to alter his contract. The market value of coal may soar, but he can no more claim an increase of his rents and royalties than he could demand more if he had sold outright a property that after-, wards proved more profitable than was expected. The lease was, in effect, a sale, On the other hand, the company may terminate the lease whenever it chooses, and, having bought what it wanted of the property, leaves the depreciated and defaced and undermined remainder to the landowner. And so long as private ownership exists, this is the most convenient method of dealing with underground property that cannot be measured and valued like a field on the surface. But it is a sale, as much so as selling a house or a horse or a pound, of tea, and that it has been twisted into meaning some special right or privilege on behalf of the landowners is merely misrepresentation for political purposes by politicians of more than one party.—I am, Sir, &c., SIENCYN.
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