national question arise" ;1 and
the government leased to the company "all the right or privilege which
the lessors have hereto exercised and enjoyed of fishing for and taking
pearl-oysters on the coasts of Ceylon between Talaimannar and Dutch Bay
Point, to the intent that the company so far as the lessors can secure the same may
have the exclusive right, liberty and authority to fish for, take and
carry away pearl-oysters within the said limits. . . . But nothing in
this lease shall be taken to make the lessors answerable in damages if owing to any cause beyond the control of the lessors the company is prevented from fully exercising and enjoying such exclusive right and privilege." 2
In
the meantime, while the negotiations were in progress, there occurred
the very profitable fishery of 1905, from which the colonial government
derived a revenue of Rs.2,510,727, or approximately eight times the
proposed annual rental; and before the lease was finally concluded
occurred the fishery of 1906, with its revenue of Rs.1,376,-746. While
it is true that a succession of barren seasons prevailed from 1892 to
1902, yet, as the revenue in 1903 was Rs.829,548, and in 1904 it was
Rs. 1,065,751, there was, in the four years ending in 1906, a revenue
to the government of Rs.5,782,772, or nearly as much as the total
amount to be derived from the lease during the twenty years it was to
run. These figures seemed to furnish strong reasons for retaining such
a valuable source of revenue, with its possibilities of still greater
expansion under the supervision and direction of specialists in the
employ of the government.
Many
of the inhabitants of Ceylon saw in this a decided objection to the
lease, and there was a general feeling of indignation in the colony,
with public meetings in protest, and the like. In reply to a memorial
prepared at one of these meetings held in Colombo, Lord Elgin, the
British secretary of state for the colonies, wrote under date of May 9,
1906:
The
memorialists have protested against the lease on the double ground that
a lease on any terms is contrary to the best interests of Ceylon, and
that the rent agreed upon is "under existing circumstances wholly
inadequate." There must' always be in cases of this kind a difference
of opinion as to whether a fixed annual sum, with immunity from all
expense and sundry Other advantages, is or is not preferable to
continuing to face all the risks for the sake of all the profits. In
the present instance the lease appears to me to have been drafted with
a sincere desire to safeguard to the utmost the property and interests
of the Colony.
It
may be true that the development of the fishery upon a scientific
system affords good prospect of a greater return in the future than has
been obtained in the past, and affords at least the hope that the
barren cycles which have
'"Ceylon Sessional Papers," 1906, p. 328. 'Ibid., pp. 333, 335.
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