THE Bay of Plenty Times. Saturday, October 30, 1875

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume IV, Issue 328, 30 October 1875, Page 2

THE Bay of Plenty Times.

Saturday, October 30, 1875

“THE SPIRIT Or THE TIMES SHALL TEACH 18^ KIST, JPHS, ICT ,

ITavixo treated on Wednesday' Mr Waterhouse’s motion, wocan t^ 9 : up Mr Eeevos’ Piako swamp, espai ally as the report of the i out, and as the latter gives Mr Beor* I and Ins followers, amongst whom 81* I George Grey may be included, a veri ! hard hit. The facts aro shortly theseThere is a largo swamp lying at ty hack of Taupiri and exiending behind Hamilton nearly up to the Piako, This is of course land confiscated under tho New Zealand Settlement Acts ; and, as such, was. by the regulations under the Acts, hound lob put up to auction at tho upset price of general rural land, .i.e, live shilling. It was so put up ; and. strange to say' no hardy settlers were found venture some enough to invest their money is tho purchase of a block eomiwater, semi-mud. £0 it roraainoj accessible for years to the genord public at the upset price and nobodt cared about going in for it till Mr Eussell, acting for u company, made an offer to tho Governineiit of fw shillings an acre for it, with a drawback of 2s 6d. an acre for the construction of a road twenty-five milelong across tho swamp. We outsettlors know pretty well the value o{ •

swamp land at present, whatever i* may he in future, and it may probahlj interest our readers to know how ranch practical knowledge is owner by the legislators who speak on sue!:

and-similar subjects with a view to making 1 political capital out of thorn Mr Hooves, fho member for Selwya. . who was the first to get at iho mm!* nost this session (the lion Mr Watatbd* house having Inst year discovered it), stated that the land in queetioe. 80,000 acres in extent, was swampy land of a most valuable character, situated in the middle of the Waikato district, and that capitalists couldiaw ~ been found to go as high as 30s an acre for it. In fact, he seems to have had quite an eloquent fit about this swamp sale, and to have floundered inths most reckless manner about the ilk - gality of the transaction, quit# ignoring the rule that confiscated lamb once put up to auction and remaining unsold, can bo taken up at the upset price. But it can be hardly expected that Mr Hooves, who may be a gooi judge of printers ink, should know much about confiscated land regulations, or about the value of land at all; so it may be taken for granted that the value he sot on this swamp land was quietly a mild newspaper fiction, something like the practice of an editor of a small paper writing letters to himself and signing them “ Yindex.” Mr Reeves lias attempted on this occasion, the character of Via* dex and has failed; oh, so badly! Then came Sir George Grey, who. ot course, brought in the poor workingman, and said lie would have had no objection if acres of the swamp had been given to poor men. We wonder bow many working men would rest satisfied with a section half water, half bog ? Of course there was the usual declamation about the richman’s acre, and the reason we are going a little at length with this, b to expose the utter humbug which . has been going on this session. Bisguise it under whatever color we may . the tactics of Sir George Grey and a few of his followers have been to tit and get a hit at Sir Donald McLean; to accuse and implicate his officer* and through them to wound himThey have spared no efforts in the?’ most unparliamentary and unstated manlike efforts, and their whole conduct has brought forcibly back $ mind the old Native comparison between Governors Brown and Greythe former, the hold sweeping hawk. the latter, the burrowing undermine rat. That Sir George’s tactics hffailed, that ho has on every occasion come to grief, and that the NstnjMinister’s honest, ont-spoken speech 6 - , have sufficed to quench the stump oratory the Member for Go - West could bring to bear are manor "well known, and all our follow ßo^ ,' on the East Coast will sympw&Y with Sir Donald McLean 0 account of the unfounded aCC

eations which have been made against him. But we must go hack to our subject. The Government, as represented by Dr Pollen and Sir Donald, accepted the offer of Russell and (Jo., and if they had not done so, they would, in our opinion, have done the Waikato an immense disservice. By allowing a wealthy company to buy this swamphit a rate quite up to its present value, the Government threw open ft good field for labor. More than this; the main stipulation was the formation of a road between the Waikato and the Thames, and this lias been for a long time one of the groat wishes of the Waikato settlers; and the opening np of communication between the Waikato and the Thames, or the settlement of any lands there, is a grand thing towards preventing any combination between different parts of the Maori territory in case of any future trouble, So, in agreeing to Messrs Russell and Co.’s proposals, Ministers acted wisely and judiciously. As for their breaking the law, that is simply nonsense. They made a mistake/and that is all. By the Act, the Governor is empowered to frame regulations regarding the sale of confiscated lands, and in this case, which was an exceptional one, special regulations should have been published in the Gazette. It appears that none such wore issued —by whoso error it is of course not known; but, at all events, a stroke of the Governor’s pen would at any moment have legalised a sale, which, though illegal in the eyes of an Opposition, is looked upon by all settlers in the vicinity of the land in question, as one highly advantageous to the neighbourhood. Wo quite agree ' with our Member, Mr William Kelly, who, when speaking on this question, said there were plenty of swamps in the Bay of Plenty he would like to see sold on the same terms; if, indeed, it would not pay the colony well to give them away on the sole condition of good roads being made through them. Since writing the above, we learn from pretty good authority, that the £ 10,000 remitted by the Government to the Company for the road will not nearly cover the expenses of making it, and that they have already expended more than that on the road and drainage works. Our readers may thus judge how far justifiable were the attacks made by the Opposition on the Government for its very judicious course in the matter.

It will bo borne in mind that tenders for tbo erection of the Motu Bridge on tho Opotiki and Poverty Bay road were invited and a tender accepted a few weeks ago, it is, therefore, with some degree of surprise that wo hear of the cessation of road work at the Opotiki end of the Jino of road. The contractor for tho excavation of rock on the Opotiki side informs ns that tho Government has suddenly given him notice to cease all work, tho reason given being that the natives have declined to carry on the earth works; an excuse which, from what we can gather of the state of the case, is very paltry, and nothing more than a quibble, Mr Penny, the contractor for tho rook excavation, having offered to carry on the earth works, and complete tho remaining seven miles at the same figure the natives have been receiving. Wo understand that, unless these seven miles, principally of sidling, are completed, the Motu Bridge will be quite useless for traffic. Under the circumstances of the case, as set forth to us, wo confess to a feeling that the Public Works Department is not dealing quite fairly with the contractor, who has experienced tho greatest difficulty in getting labour together, and who has brought down from Auckland a number of old mining hands, by which labour tho work was progressing faster than ever it did before, and who, by the suspension of the work, will bo dispersed and leave the district. The importance of this lino of road is indisputable, and wo shall be glad to learn that tho Government has reconsidered the question, and taken stops for its completion without further loss of time.