The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2295, 14 September 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1870.

We suppose our morning contemporary is too busy scanning the distant political horizon, to notice the petty attacks upon him of our up country Journals, or with a flourish of his goose quill he would annihilate them for their audacity. For once we will fight his battle, and stand in the front to repel the puny weapons which have been hurled so harmlessly against his insensible armor. We do not think there is much danger in the matter, for it really would be something to be amused at, were it not for the mischief falsehood does, to read the assertions that up-country editors dare to put forward as true. We dare say most people in Dunedin are pretty well tired with hearing and reading about the Hundreds Regulation Act. Not so our up-country fellow-colonists. Editors in the agricultural districts write for the clodocracy, and just as their readers plough, and sow, and harrow their fields, and look to their land for a livelihood, knowing nothing else, caring about nothing else, do these kind caterers for suitable food supply them with lectures on land laws. If they taught them how to cultivate land properly, the nature of manures, and the means by which the heaviest crops could bo raised, and the highest profits made without crawling to the Government for a duty to increase the price of food, they would do good instead of harm. But this would be too straightforward and honest. Truth is too sober. The clodocrats would not thank them. If their fathers had ploughed with a

donkey and a crooked stick, they would have been pleased with advocates to do the same, until they could see with their own eyes that a double furrow plough was better. Something spicy in the way of an attack on the 'I lines and Mr "Macandrew was not only easier and more likely to suit their readers, but to put sixpences into agricultural journalists’ pockets. We confess to sympathising with their difficulty. They have almost ridden their hobby to death. All that was plausible in the way of apparent argument is exhausted long since, and how to keep up the game of agitation is really a question of genius. The old subterfuge of the lawyer—“ When your cause “ is bad, attack the opposing advocate ” —is the dernier resort. Adopting this line of policy, the Bruce Standard singles out the Daily Times. We will leave our daily contemporary to defend his own arguments, which we suppose he can easily do, and content ourselves with shewing the value of that by which he is attacked ; always premising that,the falsehood of the one does not necessarily establish the truthfulness of the other. The casus belli between the Times and the Bruce Standard is, that our daily contemporary has asserted that the “ alteration in the law was “ brought about by ‘ professional land “ ‘ agitators.’ ” The term “ profes- “ sional land agitators ” seems to be what our up-country contemporary quarrels with ; and he lays down as the basis of his editorial tirade, that the Daily Times “ makes believe that the alteration of the law was brought “ about by ‘professional land agitators,’ “ conveniently ignoring the fact that “ not one of what may be termed the “ ‘ settling ’ class ever demanded any ■ “ alteration in the 1866 Act,” Now this by some may be called truth, because the Clutha petition did not expressly ask for an alteration in the Act ; but we have no hesitation in ’ characterising it as a moral falsehood, i equally mischievous and ‘indefensible. Whence has all this agitation arisen, if : not amongst those who arrogate to themselves the exclusive right to the term “ settlers ” 1 Was it not the “ settlers ” at the Clutha that asked the General Government to interfere to put a stop to what they termed the wrongdoings of the Provincial Government? Did they not, in an underhand manner, ignore the Provincial Government altogether, present a petition against the mal-ad ministration of the Act, and invite that searching investigation which justified the Government of the day in what they did, and condemned the action of the “ settlers ” by the introduction of a law which should place i the proclamation of Hundreds beyond their reach for mischief 1 The Commissioners on the administration of Crown lands in Otago say—“ The com- “ plaints of mal-adrainisttation of the “ Land Laws were principally made by “ two classes of the settlers of Otago, “ whose circumstances, as well as the “ particular laws affecting them, are “ in many particulars very dissimilar. : “ These classes are—first, the settlers “ in those parts of the Province which “ have been declared Hundreds ; and, “ secondly, the inhabitants of the dis- “ tricts which constitute the goldfields,” And now that theNEMESis they invoked is scourging them in a way they were not prepared to expect, they cry after a phantom like babies for the moon, and say they are badly treated because they cannot have it. If they were satisfied with the Act of 1860, why did they say they were not ? The Commissioners tell us that the complaint of the “ settlers ” “ is, that the “ Provincial Government, by its acts, “ has deprived them of the commonage “ required for the feed of cattle or “ sheep necessary for the successful “ pursuit of farming operations,” By the new Hundreds Regulation Act, the Act of 1860, so far as we are aware, is only supplemented to such an extent as to render its operation equal and equitable. It takes away the bone of contention that caused such disreputable contradictory evidence to be given when the Provincial Council was the arbiter as to where Hundreds should bo proclaimed, and where they should not. It has prevented the Clutha settlers from being squatters without paying the rent of runs ; and while it has provided for settling a large agricultural population on the soil, it has presented a barrier to an important interest being ruined by the action of ignorant and selfish men. We should recommend the Bruce Standard to change its ground, for agitation on that it has chosen is dangerous. We think it a convenient time for him to abandon the forlorn hope, and find another mare’s nest; for, before long, many of those who inveighed against the Act will in all probability become its advocates.