The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, JUNE 7.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 511, 7 June 1881, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, JUNE 7.

Nothing is more suggestive of the weakness of a cause than when its supporters decline to reason the matter out, and trust simply to sneers and abuse to crush their opponents. The plan no doubt lias its advantages. By declining argument, they conceal the weak points in their case, the joints in (heir harness. The ignorant multitude laugh and clap their hands, nnd imagine a position must lie unassailable when its supporters can afford to parry all attacks simply with a joke and a sneer. But the adherents of the system may place too blind a reliance on it after all. Thoughtful men may begin to wonder how it is that while arguments, be they good or bad, are adduced on one side* the other can retaliate with nothing . The applause of the unthinking multitude is not to bo depended on : —

"The blunt monster with uncounted headp, The still-discordant wavering multitude," may sudd nly veer round and leave the late po-isesw of its applause to pine unrecognised. No doubt the Marquis of the old regime cracked many a joke about the wild theories of the philosopher and the absurd demands of the sansculottes, but while he was yet givin™ utterance to the most polished satire, the storm, which he had been carefully nursing, though he knew it not, burst upon his devoted head, and he was swept from the face of the earth, never more to reappear, or to be even dreamed of as a possibility.

We have been led into this line of thought by ti.e treatment which the gic.it question of the system of land tenure is receiving at the hands of the advocates of monopoly, among , whom we are sorry to have to class the Premier of New Zealand. Mr Hall, in his Lccston speech made the astounding assertion that any fears which might exist as to the evils attending the aggregation of hind in large estates were " all moonshine." He further asserted that the land in Xew Zealand was more divided than in any part of the world, In making this last statement the speaker must have overlooked a few, not altogether unimportant portions of the earth's surface—say, France, Italy, the Canadian Dominion, and the United States of America. He must have presumed that his hearers were utti rly ignorai.t of such facts as the following. Here is an extract from a table prepared by the late Edward Jerningham Wakeh'old, shortly before his death, containing a list of some of the great estates, which we quote from a pamphlet by Mr Scaily referred to in our last issue. From this it appears that:— Acres. In Cheviot County there were '6 estates containing together 170,00 D Wuikato 1 ~ 80.000 Piako 1 „ 38,'00U Mnrl borough 11 ~ ;50 ( J,000 Ivnkora 2 ,', 41,400 Amuri 8 „ 248,000 Ashley 4 „ 110,000 Selwyn 2 „ 155,000 Ashburton 4 „ 44,000 Ger.ddine 4 „ 00,000 Wtiiiniito 11 „ 282.000 Waitaki 8 „ 1f<3,000 Waikouaiti 2 „ iJO.OUO Clutlia 4 .. 126.000 Tuap.-ka 4 „ 110,(101) .'■'(iiiililand lli ~ -J.31.0U0 Wallace 7 „' 110,500 Total ... D 2 From this list you will see (continues Mr Scaly) that ninety-two e&tatcs (all but two oi' which are in this island) '-inbraeo between them no less than 2,31)8,100 acres

of freehold land, or an average of. 20,175 acres each. These ninely-lwo -estates, if divided into farms of the average size of those of the United States, would provide homes for nearly 10,000 farmers ; whilst, if .ye allow for eacli farmer a wife, an average of four children, a- ploughman, and a servant girl, we should have no less than 128,000 people subsisting on these ninety-two estates alone, which probably do not now average mere than 30 souls on each, or about 27000 in all.

But while Mi* Hall is wrong in his facts, there are advocates of the monopolists who seem to bo still more blinded to the nature of the question <xt issue. For instance, a leader-writer in the Tvnaru Herald, in criticising a speech of Mr Turnbull's, refers in withering scorn to Sir George Grey's *' old fustian about the theoretical tenure of land." The art/cle goes on to say :—

It (the land question), is always a popular subject for a town audience, who not having the. smallest personal interest involved in the question affecting land, liston with complacency to all sorts of high-flown projects for ruining landholders and partitioning their property among the unemployed. If they had any personal interest involved, or if they had any real knowledge of the subject, they would be quick enongh to see the fallacy of such arguments as MrTurnbnll used, and to resent such suggestions as he mncle. As it was all a matter of sentiment, however, and had no particular substance, it wns perfectly safe, and on the whole not injudicious, for him to devote the greater part of his speed) to denouncing the landholders for locking up the heritage of the people, and drawing glorious pictures of an Utopia where every man shall have an equal share of the land, not by purchase, but by the right of his manhood, after the present quasi owners have been taxed off the face of that earth.

Of course the concluding paragraph forms only another example of the somewhat stale device of setting up a man of straw for the purpose of knocking him down again, but it is difficult to conceive of the dense state of ignorance, real or assumed, in which a writer must be sunk I when he can speak of town audiences not having the smallest interest in questions affecting land, and its being all a '■matter of sentiment." Did it never strike this oracle that even to a townsman, for whom ho can scarcely coueoal his contempt, it must be a matter of supreme importance whether the surrounding country is to be occupied by hundreds of families, all of whom will make his town their depot, or run over by a few thousand sheep, the property of some gigantic absentee proprietor ? Has he never heard of the artizan desirous to secure a home tor himself and a location where he may bring up his children with room to breathe ? " A matter of sentiment," indeed ! If there is one question that is of stern, uncompromising, vital, and practical importance to every man, woman, and child that exists on the surface of the earth, it is this very question of the disposition of the land.

For the present we merely wish to call the attention of those who have never thought this subject out to the fact that there is something to be said against what many appear almost tv think a Divinely-appointed system of land tenure. On a future occasion we shall revert to this subject, and indicate a few signs of the times, showing how deeply contrary doctrines are permeating society, and especially those portions of it which have the greatest influence, ultiaiately. in forming that utterly resistless force—Public Opinion.