The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2921, 29 June 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1872.

It would be an instructive though mournful lesson in psychology were all the attempts at swindling the public in railway compensation courts exposed. There was not a railway projected during the introduction of the system at Home for which land had not to be paid for at an enormous cost. Men, who in the ordinary transactions of life had the character of being fair dealing, forgot conscience and honesty, and committed themselves not only to the most extravagant demands, but to the most outrageous violations of truth in support of them. Noblemen claimed and got enormous sums for trifling strips of land, very often as hush money or bribes for their support in Parliament, and owners of cabbage gardens one day, were made capitalists the next by the sums demanded and paid for them. As the value of railways was at that time problematical, some slight excuse may be found, as their construction was imagined to be more for the private interest of the shareholders than for the benefit of those through or near to whose property they past. Time went on, and as the system became developed, it was found that railways could only prosper through opening up the resources of the districts through which they were carried. Whether the shareholders received dividends or not the owners of property were enriched. The facilities for communication with markets afforded by railways gave value to laud that was previously almost worthless, and multiplied the area of country available for profitable culture. Mines and quarries were opened up that would otherwise have been unworked for ages, and a home and export trade developed, the bounds of which it is impossible to foretell. Many persons, conscious of the incalculable advantage they would derive from contiguity to a railway, were liberal in their offers: others asked only fair compensation for the land taken from them. These were the majority, otherwise no railway would have been obtained ; but there have always been a few cunning ones who have not hesitated to grasp at prices not justifiable on any ground, and which they would never think of asking in a private business transaction. It is useless to reason with such men; it is useless to point out that

they are trying to enrich themselves at the expense of their neighbors. Such a reason has no weight with them ; accident has placed them in tile way of being brought out as a necessity; and such a man argues, “ If neighbor A was fool enough to take so and so for his laud, that is no reason why I should do the same. The constant difficulties that English tenures of property throw in the way of improvements should have led to a system more in accordance with present social requirement in the Colonies. It would have been very easy to have devised a plan to have guarded against these attempts at swindle, for they are neither more nor less; but neither our first nor subsequent settlers seem to have any other idea of dealing with land than by the Government parting with all control over it for a mere trifle, and buying it back at an enormous advance whenever it is wanted for the general good. Some of the prices paid for land taken by the Port Chalmers Railway could never have been obtained had not the Act conferred a premium upon going to arbitration ; so that, in order to avoid it where possible, the promoters were compelled to offer many times the value of the property. We are glad to see that at the District Court at Tokomairiro a check has been put upon this system, and that the very liberal offer made for the property adjudicated upon was pronounced more than its value by the Court. In the case of the Clutha line, every person through whose property it passes, if it be extensive, will have a premium conferred which he had no right to expect considering the terms on which he purchased it. The first buyers had no thought beyond having a common metalled road by which they could convey their produce to market. They gave at the outside a pound an acre for their land and, and at a low* estimate the construction of the Clutha Railway will at the very least add that to its value. The small quantity of land required, even if given, would have been wisely given in view of the increased value of the risk, but this was not asked, and in fact about three or four times the first cost was offered and refused. The strangest feature in the affair is that men not immediately interested can be found deliberately to come forward and swear to values that they know to be purely fictitious, and in fact much beyond what they themselves have set upon the property under other circumstances. Were a number of persons to band themselves deliberately together for the purpose of fleecing an individual, they would render themselves liable to prosecution for conspiracy to defraud: but when the proposed victim is the public, as in the case tried at Tokomairiro, or in common parlance, the Government, any amount of conspiracy is winked at. For our parts, so primitive are pur notions on the subject, that we cannot see the difference.