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Dunstan Times, Issue 430, 15 July 1870, Page 2

Mr. J. D. Feraud, in an exhaustive letter on “ The Land Question and immigration,which appeared iu our 1 ist issue, supplies some very useful suggestions, which, if given effect to, would do an immense deal towards inducing population to settle upon the lands of the colony. There is no gainsayingthefactthat. before bringing

immigrants into the country, wo should first provide them with work to do, so that they may be able to maintain themselves upon arrival, and, as Mr. Feraud says, this can only be done by creating industAes which are only to be created by the plough. To be prosperous we must be an agricultural countiy, or, at the very least, we must be able to grow sufficient breadstuff's for our own consumption, together with meat, butter, cheese, bacon, and hams, and all other articles of ordi. nary household consumption; and considering that, figuratively speaking, we grow our own money, no country ought, to be more .prosperous nor people more happy than the colonists of New Zealand. The high price of land is doubtless a great drawback to settlement, and should be reduced, but to do that we should part with a valuable portion of our revenue, which we can scarcely afford to do without. There are certainly lands worth one pound per acre, and there are lands not worth half that amount, and, whatever may be said to the contrary, good land will always be a monopoly, because there is so very little of it, A system of classifying land would answer evety purpose, and, with payments by instalments, even the very hill tops might be sold and made to support a large population. The farmer, to make his business pay, must combine other industries with that of growing cereal crops, or he will not only ruin himself hut his land also, which, in a very few years, will be almost a barren waste. He must therefore grow meat, and to do this the competition of the squatter is sadly against him. The one must grow almost everything his cattle consume, while the other, by having the monopoly of so much land, requires to produce nothing. This difficulty may be obviated whenHioldings are large and grass paddocks are laid down. But this i« quite beyond the means of a small capitalist, ior the reasons that land is dear, fencing is dear, and labor and seeds are dear, and lastly, in the up-country districts, artificial grasses are a very questionable success. We must have grazing farms, as well as farms for grain-growing, when everybody would be able to find employment and the land made to produce much more than is now the case. The experiment of compensating a squatter for the whole of his run, and selling it out in'farm s of from one hundred to one thousand acres, would certainly be worth trying. We again reiterate, with MrFeraud, that, before introducing immigrants to come among us, we must first provide them with something to do.