The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2876, 8 May 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1872.

That everlasting theme of Provincial controversy, the Land Bill, has been thrown into the Provincial Council, and once more this vexed question is to be re-opened. Mr Reid introduced it in a temperate speech, and pointed out that with the exception of one clause, introduced to give facilities foxgranting leases in certain specified cases, the Bill he proposed was identical with that passed last year, which met the approval of the House of Representatives. Whether the amendments of which notice of motion was given by Mr Tolmie are improvements, we cannot tell until we see them in print and have time to consider them. It is quite natural that new members should endeavor to introduce a system in accordance with their own views of what is for the good of the Province, and if they are improvements, they should be carefully considered and adopted. But thou wc are driven to a question of comparative merits, not only of the proposed system with that of last year, but of the question whether it would not be better to pass a Bill to which the House of Representatives cannot well object, and that thus this vexed question may be so far settled as to lead to its being brought immediately into operation, or to pass a Bill, founded upon a new theory, which may possibly be rejected, and in consequence another year’s delay be added to the already three years of cessation of the sale of land. We do not believe that any scheme yet propounded will effect a final settlement of the question. They arc all based upon notions respecting property in land which we have inherited from our feudal forefathers. All the laud systems which have been tried in the various Colonies of the South are patched and tinkered by successive Ministries until scarcely a vestige of the old laws remain excepting that of transferring a common right in the soil to individuals for a mere fraction of its worth. Sons of the toil come out from Britain with the hope of getting a bit of land of their own, and would sooner invest their little capital in the fee simple and live in a state of agricultural pauperism than pay a small rent for a sufficient area to get rich upon with their capital free to work it. The conviction is gradually gaining ground amongst advanced thinkers that the true land tenure should be that of leasing it for certain specific purposes, and paying a rental for the use of it to the community ; who, through the revenue thus derived from it, would be spared that taxation which now presses so heavily upon industry. By this means alone can the State retain such control over the Provincial estate as to apply it in the best manner for the common weal. By such a plan all antagonism of interests would be sunk. The squatter and the farmer, the miller, the miner, the flax manufacturers, would enjoy equal privileges on equitable terms; capital would be economised, and impediments of all sorts to improvement removed. There would be no necessity for Moa Flat committees, nor for compensation amounting to fifty times its value of the land taken for railways. We are aware that political objections are urged against such a plan, as if evil foreseen could not be guarded against; but the real difficulty in the way of its adoption is the superstition so deeply engrafted in the British mind in regard to lauded property. At Home it is so hedged round with safe-guards to retain it in families that each aristocratic landowner is a petty sovereign, and his retainers will pay him a rental annually of twice the value of the fee-simple of

land in the Colonies. On removal to this part of the world, on the other hand, such an arrangement as a lease of land granted by the Government for agricultural purposes without a purchasing clause, is not tolerated. We do not allude to this leasing system with any expectation of so simple a plan being adopted. It is too easy to be believed in. There is a sort of fatality in human experiments, even in arts dependent upon ascertainable facts for their accomplishment. We never seem to hit at once upon the best and simplest way of doing a thing. From the boiling of a kettle to the working of a steam-engine, we begin with rough schemes, then try all sorts of complications, which, piece by piece, are thrown away as cumbrous and superfluous, and ultimately find the greatest effect is produceable by the simplest applications. And if this is so, where we have to deal with material which we can see, and handle, and measure ; which we can twist and turn about at will, and pull to pieces and put together again, and file and fit so as to work more smoothly, what wonder that mistakes are made in fitting laws to human rights ascertainable only by abstract reasoning 1 Our Council are in fora, long and tough job. They are going into a debate on a subject in which the first principles have not been settled. The relation of man to the soil, and the nature of the rights of property in it, are never considered as necessary elements to a final and equitable decision on the subject; and the consequence is men go on groping in the dark, missing the straight and narrow road in the perplexed mazes of the millions of ways of error consequent upon ill-conducted and unphilosophical experiment. There is a prospect of ten days of discussion, if the Bill is to be considered clause by clause ; and the result will be a hotch-potch measure that will have to be amended again and again.