The Evening Star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1870.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2362, 27 October 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1870.

"Without a popular cry an election -would lose its interest; and really it is difficult to know what crying grievance requires a “ coming man ” to set it to rights. Yet when a candidate offers ' himself for election, he must say something in his own favor ; and that usually ijneans condemning everybody else. The

election for a substitute for Mr Dillon Bell in the Provincial Council, is equally a prospective as a present honor. There will be only just a chance of shewing the shift the successful candidate is made of in the short session about to be held ; and, with ordinary tact and care, the electors will feel almost bound in honor to return the man who is willing to contest a seat twice within a few months. We consider the present election in the light of a feeler. The popular pulse is undergoing a test, and attentive observers may learn in what direction public opinion sets by what most interests now. We cannot say that yesterday’s nomination was indicative of any decided bias on merely local politics. Both candidates who addressed the few persons who met to listen to them, seemed to imagine the new land laws the hete noir, and both thought it necessary to condemn them, without apparently any clear idea, of what they are, or how they arc likely to work. This new bit of legislation reminds one of the picture of the Athenian painter. It is hung up for the public to look at, and they are requested to chalk out its defects. Accordingly, one finds one blemish, a second another, a third something else. Viewed by a clodocrat, he grumbles because it does not allow him to be a squatter; viewed by a squatter, it does not give him an indefeasible title to the land he occupies. Viewed by Mr Bathgate, it gives the squatter, when dopxived of his run, compensation for money invested on faith of the land regulations under which he was induced to stock it. Viewed by MiFish, it is unworkable because of the impossibility of finding the requisite proportions of agricultural and grazing land combined. He, however, made the mistake of fancying it half of each, instead of one-third agricultural land. Viewed by Mr Stout, the advantage of settling a pauper farming population on the soil is rendered remote. Viewed by some of the old settlers, it deprives them of the chance of growing sheep and cattle outside their farms. Viewed by Mr J. L. Gillies, it is an infringement of the rights and privileges of the Provincial Council Viewed by Mr Main, it is robbery of the squatting interest. Viewed by Mr Brown, it is destructive to the mining interests. In fact, there never was such a bad picture. Like the one exhibited in Athens, every feature —nay, every line of it—is open to condemnation. “ What fault “ do you find with the new land law 1 ” we asked of an, old settler one day. “ Oh !" he said, “ it takes away our “ commons, and reduces the value of “ our property.” “ How can that be 1 “ When you bought your land, you “ knew that when the remainder of “ the Hundred was sold your gra?ing “ right would cease.” This was an unfortunate hit, for we had to undergo the infliction of a long list of grievances, ending with the injustice done to those who bought land at a pound an acre, who had had <the use of an unlimited number of acres in addition for seven years, and then were swinpled by those acres being sold, in accordance with the Act, at ten shillings an acre. We do not know whether many will be found to agree in the notion that this universal condemnation of the Hundreds .Regulation Act on such various grounds, is equivalent to a proof of its justice and equity. Setting aside mere theorists, who would sweep away all existing laws and commence de novo, were the judgment of the public drawn to its advantages instead of its defects, it is quite within the range of possibility that advocates would be found who would be able to give good reasons in favor of each of its provisions. With regard to the squatters, for instance, the opponents of that Bill are very fond of parading what they term the exorbitant compensation payable to them, by pointing out the small rents they pay for thenruns ; but they leave out one striking feature cf the case, which is, that when it was the law that they should be entitled to compensation .equal to tlu-ee years’ rental, the whole amount of assessment on stock for the year commencing October Ist, 1865, and ending September 30th, 1860, was only £3896 8s 7d, and for the following half-year £2830 6s 5d ; whereas a week or two ago nearly £60,000 was paid into the Treasury for one year's assessment. Perhaps some person having a strong sense of justice in his conscience might perceive a reason why some difference should be made, the more especially when the percentage of assessment upon the present value of stock, as compared with its worth in 1866, is considered. Another person, taking another feature of the Bill into consideration, might perhaps be led to investigate the mighty advantages claimed by detractors of the new Act that the Act of 1866 gave to the Government in the proclamation of Hundreds. And if he were curious enough, he might be led to look into the records of the Committee on Hundreds, in which clodocrat and squatto-

crat vied with each other in such gross misrepresentation of facts, as to induce several members of the Committee to regrot they had not the power to swear the witnesses, in order that they might prosecute them for perjury. He would then compare the provisions of this blackened Act,* and he would find that by a very simple process, wherever a number of persons desire to possess land, they have only to petition that a Hundred may be proclaimed, and it will be done—without reference to either squatter or settler. Some might indeed go so far as to believe that, instead of shutting up the land, the people have far more effectual access to it than they ever had before ; that far less depends upon the administrators of the law than hitherto, and far more upon the people, whether it shall be made the means of rapidly settling the country or not. The Executive are now taking steps to hmig a hog-' quantity of land into the market, aim we therefore look forward to increased revenue, and renewed activity and progress in the Province. Audi alteram partem.