CONCERNING THOSE RUNS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1665, 17 September 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

CONCERNING THOSE RUNS

It is curious how Ministers and their newspapers will persist m discussing every subject except the one upon whioh tho Ministry appealed to the country, namely, the financial proposals made by the Government to the House last session. All sorts of red herrings are drawn across the scent, all sorts of dodges and devices used to distraot the eleotors' attention, and cries of every kind are raised. One of the funniest of these efforts to mislead the electors is the assertion that, if the Opposition get into power, the leases now held by the oooupiers of the Canterbury runs, will be .-ederwed upon their expiry m May, 1890. Why there should be more danger of renewal, if the Opposition were m office, than there would be if the present Ministry continues m power, the Ministerialists do not condescend to explain. Seeing that Sir Julius Yogel has always been the representative of the large landowner?, and the monied interests of the colony, and that tho Canterbury squatters were the main instruments of his return to office m 1884 ; seeing further, that Mr Larnaeh has, m his time, been one of the largest runholders m Otago, one would have thought that the interests of the Canterbury runholders were not likely to be neglected by ihe Stout-Vogel Ministry. Indeed the Ministry had soarcely got warm m their seats before they proceeded to appoint Mr Lancelot-Walker, a Canterbury runholder, to a seat m the Legislative Council, although that gentleman had certainly never rendered nyy publio services to entitle him to such a distinction. The faot is, however, that this question of the leases of the Canterbury runs is already settled by law ; and neither the present Ministry, nor any other Ministry, will have power to renew the leases. The runs will, m 1890, have to be out up into Bmall sized blocks, and the leases sold by auction ; and the cry that there is any danger of the leases being renewed, is the veriest olaptrap, merely raised to delude the electors. Were the caie otherwise, we should hardly have thought that so far as Ashburton is oonoerned, Mr Walker was the proper parson to guard the rights of the mass of the people m this matter, inasmuch as he is a runholder himself, and we believe, has been a runholder ever since his arrival m the oolony.