IMPORTANT TO SMALL SETTLERS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 945, 28 May 1880, Page 3

IMPORTANT TO SMALL SETTLERS.

An important decision affecting deferred payment section holders has been given by Judge Williams, who holds that “where a Land Board has once granted an application by any person for land on deferred payment under tho Land Act, 1877, the Board has no power to entertain a fresh application by such person for additional land ou deferred payments, even although the allotment originally granted did not contain the maximum area specified in section 57. The meaning of the declaration in section 62 must he taken to be that the applicant has no interest at all in any deferred payment land ; and as to land under agricultural lease, that the amount of his interest, added to the acreage applied for, does not exceed 320 acres. The words ‘ the deferred payment system ’ in the form of declaration set out in section 62, refer, I think, only to the system of deferred payments which is regulated by the Land Act, 1877, and the amending Act of 1879. There is nothing to prevent a holder of deferred payment land under some other Act taking up a deferred payment section under the Act of 1877- whether he could hold them both might be a different question. Thus, if personal residence were a condition in both cases he would have to abandon one or the other. Tho words ‘ immediately contiguous ’ in section 6 of the Act of 1879, would, I think, prevent sections separated by a road line from being grouped, although there may he n slight doubt on this point, but they certainly would not prevent sections separated only by a creek from being grouped.”