e would in effect say to each owner of a
mineral tract: The value of your property to a purchaser is in present
money Lx, and you are required to lend to the State the amount of this
purchase price at, say, 5 per cent. per annum, in exchange for which you
will receive bonds bearing interest at that rate in perpetuity, which
bonds you can sell whenever you like."

The minerals or royalties being acquired by the State, what then? For
the first time the State would be placed in a strategic position for
the control and development of this great national asset. Having
acquired the minerals and issued bonds to compensate the former owners,
the State enters into the receipt of the royalty payments, and these
payments will be kept alive. We must now decide between at least two
courses: (_a_) Is the State to do nothing more and merely wait for
existing leases to expire and fall in, and then attach any new
conditions it may consider necessary upon receiving applications for
renewals? Or (_b_) is the State to be empowered by Parliament to
determine the existing leases at any time and so accelerate the time
when it can attach new conditions, make certain re-grouping of mines,
etc.? My answer is that the latter course (_b_) must be adopted. The
same Act of Parliament which vests the coal and the royalties in the
State, or another Act passed at the same time, should give the State
power to determine the then existing leases if and when it chooses,
subject to just compensation for disturbance in the event of the
existing lessees refusing to take a fresh lease.

Why is course (_b_) recommended? (i) Most leases are granted for terms
varying from thirty to sixty years. They are falling in year by year,
but we cannot afford to wait until they have all fallen in if we are
effectively to deal with a pressing problem. (ii) The second objection
to merely waiting is that some colliery-owners (not many) might make up
their minds not to apply for a renewal of their leases, and might
consequently be tempted to neglect the necessary development and
maintenance work, over-concentrating on output, and thus allowing the
colliery to get into a backward state from which it would cost much time
and money to recover it--a state of affairs which could and would be
provided against in future leases, but which the framers of existing
leases may not have visualised. I do not suggest that upon the
acquisition by the State of the minerals all the existing lea