INDUCEMENTS TO BUILD WELLS 155 



landlord is allowed to claim enhancement of rent on 

 the ground that the rate paid by the tenant is below 

 the prevailing rate paid by occupancy tenants for land 

 of similar quality and enjoying similar advantages. 

 The consequence is that the tenant who for the first 

 time introduces well irrigation into a tract previously 

 unirrigated is not exempt from enhancement of his 

 rent up to the rate prevailing on land in the same 

 neighbourhood in which similar facilities for irrigation 

 exist. The Irrigation Commissioners of 1903 recom- 

 mended that the law should be altered for the benefit 

 of the tenant. * The existing provisions,' they said, 

 'are defended on the ground that the difference between 

 the dry and the wet rate is the equivalent of a royalty 

 on the subsoil water to which the landlord is fairly 

 entitled. Admitting this, however, it must be remem- 

 bered that Government is entitled to take a similar 

 royalty from landowners when they make irrigational 

 improvements, and that Government foregoes this 

 share of its royalty for at least a whole thirty years' 

 period of settlement. Tenants who make similar im- 

 provements would seem to be entitled to receive from 

 their landowners not less liberal treatment than im- 

 proving landowners receive from the State. We 

 submit, therefore, for consideration the suggestion 

 that when a tenant constructs a permanent well, the 

 land commanded by which was previously unirrigated 

 and assessed only at dry rates at the time of the con- 

 struction of the well, should be exempt from wet rates 

 until the expiry of ten years after the period for which 

 the tenant is entitled to hold the land at the existing 

 rental. Thus, if a tenant constructs the well at the 

 commencement of the ten years' period for which his 

 rent cannot be enhanced, he will secure exemption 

 from wet rates for a period of twenty years. Such a 

 measure as we propose would, we believe, prove an 

 effective inducement to tenants to make permanent 

 masonry wells. It may be opposed by the landownersj 



