The Ashburton Guardian. Manga est Veritas et Prævalebit WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1886. DEFERRED PAYMENT SETTLEMENT IN HAWKES BAY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1438, 22 December 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Manga est Veritas et Prævalebit WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1886. DEFERRED PAYMENT SETTLEMENT IN HAWKES BAY.

We had been under the impression that the wave of depression which has nearly submerged the rest of New Zealand had scarcely touched Hawkes Bay, and that indeed that favored district was in a highly prosperous condition. It would, nowever, appear from a recent article in the Napier Daily Telegraph that our northern friends have not been so exceptionally fortunate as we had supposed, that journal informing its readers that “ the effect of the depressed condition of the world at large has been marked in Hawke’s Bay by the number of bank ruptcies. Year by year these fatal evidences of the tightness of money and low values of produce have increased in number. In 1884 only eighteen persons were compelled to yield to the pressure of the times. In the following year twenty-six filed their schedules and sought the protection of the Act. This year the bankruptcies have reached the astonishing number of forty-eight, and there is another for night to elapse before the close of the twelve months. The worst feature of the majority of the failures is that the assets of the estates are either nil, or are unavailable.” So far there is nothing very exceptional in the state of affairs recorded by the Telegraph. We have indeed got so used to that sort of thing “ down south ” that we may even say that there is nothing at rll remarkable in it. But our contemporary goes on to say that “ there is another bad feature in the list of bankrupts, which is that the most rf them are deferred-payment settlers ana laborers. That deferred-payment settlers should be forced into the Bankruptcy Court is not surprising, considering the absurd anxiety manifested by the present Government to induce people to go upon the land. All sorts of facilities are offered to all comers desirious of mak ing a home for themselves, with the result that the land gets into the occupation of persons without money or experience, who, after some years of hard work, to which they are quite unsuited, which makes it all the harder for them, are compelled at last to yield to the pressure of creditors. In many cases, however, they manage to hang on to the land for a sufficient period to enable them to save it from being included in their assets, assigning it to their wives or children. The so-called liberality of our land law* is doing an immense amount of mischief, for it is the means of putting the wrong people on the land. The profitable occupation of land is all that the State is concerned in ; but when the State fusses itself in planting penniless people on ground which they can make no good use of a positive harm is done to the colony. It does not seem to be sufficiently borne in mind that the occupation of land demands a capital in proportion to the acreage to be brought into cultivation, and that it is just as financially criminal toenter on land without means asitisfor a person to start in business or open a shop without money. We venture to think that unless there is some modification of the Land Act, in respect of deferred-payment and village settlements, by which the possession of a certain amount of capital must be proved before an application for land can be entertained, we shall have not only a plentiful crop of bankruptcies, but untilled lands in the hands of the wives of uncertificated bankrupts.” It is evident from the foregoing that the Telegraph has no great sympathy with the cause of settlement, or it would not characterise the anxiety of the present Government to induce people to “go upon the land” as “ absurd,” but, while we admit that its remarks are to a certain extent correct, we do not agree that in all cases the possession of capital should be insisted upon. Under the homestead system, for instance, there are numbers of men whose capital consists solely of their own energies, who can successfully found homes for themselves and their families on land given to them by the State for that purpose. That system is, however, only applicable to certain parts of the colony and, for Canteibury and the the greater part of Otago at anyrate, the Village Settlement system by means of Associations, under the pi in recently formulated by Mr Ballance, will better meet the requirements of the case, and will not be open to the objections of the Telegraph, as under it the individual settlers will have to pay down one-fourth of the purchase price of the land, and in respect of the remainder will have to pay by way of rental a t&te of interest so low as to be no serious tax upon their energies, a condition of things which will not be productive of the failures and bankruptcies which the Telegraph deplores.