CLYDE FRIDAY, JAN- 9 1885

Dunstan Times, Issue 1193, 9 January 1885, Page 2

CLYDE FRIDAY, JAN- 9 1885

The special settlement icguhitions published in the New Zealand Gazette deserve, as we may say, special noicc, I'hey afford an opportunity, for the formation of small communities, having a joint interest, to lake up from one thousand to ten Ihou-and acres of Crown lands, and to occupy it either by personal residence or by the re-i deuce ot a “ registered substitute” that is ’ V a son or servant or other employee-the very thing that has been wanted for many years. The terms arc very easy, and seemingly the land can be .selected ahywhn’e subject to the approval ot the Minister of Lands Strange 10 say, no n.enation is made of the price to be paid for the land, but as the regulations are issued under tlie provisions of the Land Act of 1879, and the Governor is to “fix (he terms and conditions.” it, is allowable to presume that, the price will be a matte, of special arrangement. There must be at least 25 persons included in the Association, and the allotment of the sections in a selected block is to lie made in such a manner ns “ the Association nuv, with the consent of the Minister, determine.” After six years, if the cmditioua of “substantial improve meat” have been complied with, the holder may obtain a Crown gra-t for bis land. This is tho very thing we have long been wanting. The difficulty in creating bona fide settlement in the interior of Otigo Ins arisen principally from tho insistauce on personal residence. No man hiving a profession or a business, necessitating his residing in a township, could possibly make a home for himself or his children, because he could not leave his shop or his office to icside on the land. Anything more cruel or more detrimental to the cause of true settlement than the residence clauses of the Land Act, it is quite impossible to conceive The records of the Lund Board prove this most incontestably. Look, for instance at she Tapanui cases, where a young girl was robbed of her holding because she cm del not—and very pioperly would not—sleep in a lonely lint on the slope of a mountain range. Consider also Mr Naylor’s ease. There was a proved true and good settler—none better in New Zealand, who has been persecute 1 for months because he does not dwell upon one section out of the many he cultivates. Tho residence clauses of the Laud Act were inserted with tlm view of preventing ngricultural d.inimyism and encouraging settlement, but all experience lias shown that they have a deterrent effect. Jt is with pleasure, therefore, that we hail this change of policy indicated by these new regulations, which allow of a man residing as it were by proxy. What is to prevent an Association from taking up 10,000 acres on the Duns tan Flat, bringing in water, planting it, and so converting what is now a howling wilderness inlo an Antipodean Paradise- a veritable garden ot Sharon. The soil is there, the water is to he got; where are the men and the money requisite for comverting (he I 1 lot into a terreslial LI Dorado 1 ?