Count Hatzfeldt to Earl of Rosebery.
My Lord: As your excellency is doubtless aware, the Samoa treaty provides that land claims put forward by foreigners shall be brought before the land commission established at Apia to be examined and eventually registered. It appears from a fee table issued by the chief judge of Samoa that he contemplates levying a fee of $5 on the registration of each single land title, the proceeds of which fee will go to Dr. Hagber, a Swedish subject, who has been appointed by the chief judge to be registrar, and who is at the same time clerk to the court. Some 3,000 land titles will, on a rough estimate, have to be registered. This number would give Dr. Hagberg $15,000. But such a burden represents a heavy burden on all foreign landed interests, especially on such persons as hold several parcels of land. The latter class would in certain particular cases have to pay very considerable sums. The Plantations Company, for instance, has put in 1,198 claims; Harris & MacFarlane, an English firm, 460, etc. If 1,000 and 400 of these claims are respectively recognized as valid the firms named would have to pay 21,000 marks and 8,400 marks, respectively.
The registration fee will press still more, and still more unjustly on the holders of several small parcels of land than on the large land holders. The want of any proper relation between the value of the land and the amount of the fee is in such cases still more apparent, for in particular cases the fee would exceed 10 per cent of the value. Plots of ground outside Apia, which are often the only property of their Owners, not seldom yield little or nothing beyond the small amount of produce on which the owners live, and they will in many cases be quite unable to pay the heavy fees without mortgaging their land.
According to the view of the Imperial Government the chief judge has no power to impose such a tax on foreigners of his own authority. Article vi, section 2, D2, [Page 569] of the Samoa treaty, provides that a tax of one-half per cent shall he levied “upon deeds of real estate, to be paid before registration thereof can be made.” It is to be assumed that with such payment the liability of foreign land holders on account of registration will terminate. According to Article vi, section 2, further charges beyond the one-half per cent may not be imposed unless with the concurrence of the consuls of the three treaty powers. Such concurrence has as yet neither been sought nor given, and in view of the disproportionately high figure of the fee would hardly be obtained.
The Imperial Government is unable for the present to recognize the fee imposed by the chief judge of his own authority on foreigners as binding in law, and is of opinion that this course is not contrary to Article iii, section 1, of the Samoa treaty, which provides that suitable fees may be allowed to the clerk and to the marshal of the court.
The chief judge may fix the amount of such fees, but so long as the consuls have not concurred in them such fees may not be a charge on foreign land owners; they should rather be defrayed by the Samoan Government, who can in the circumstances supposed deduct them from the one-half per cent tax. The Imperial Government proposes to instruct the consul at Apia in this sense; but before taking action they would be glad to receive information as to the view taken by Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, and as to whether that Government would be prepared to issue similar instructions to their representative at Apia, in order that foreign settlers in Samoa may be protected by common action against the considerable and unjustifiable injury which would be caused by the measure taken by the chief judge to the profit of an official of his own appointing.
Under the instructions which I have received I have the honor to bring the above to your excellency’s knowledge, and to ask for an expression of the opinion of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government on this matter, and also whether your excellency would be inclined to give to the English representative at Apia instructions similar to those which the Imperial Government propose to send to their consul.
I have, etc.,