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Evening Star, Issue 3251, 22 July 1873, Page 2

In politics, as in dress, there seems to be a fashion. It is not necessary that it should be strictly in accordance with the requirements of the season : in fact, like fashions among women, it may have its origin in caprice, and once adopted, is often pushed to the extreme of absurdity. Our Provincial Council is in danger of drifting into thisdifficulty in the newly-adopted fashion of selling land on deferred payments. If we must sell land to make railways, we want money to pay for the work as it goes on. But on the deferred payment system, land is sold on credit, spreading over a senes of years. Mr Beid’s proposed amendment on the Government resolutions is therefore manifestly out of place. The intention of the deferred payment system is, to promote settlement by giving opportunity to enterprising men possessing small capital, to settle upon a farm, without the necessity of first locking up a large proportion of their means in purchasing land. It is plainly desirable to meet the condition of that class ; but like the cry of “ small farms” which was the prevailing fashion some five years ago, when the settler’s elysium was a cottage, a wife and children, a pig in a stye, and a cow feeding on the natural grasses, they are not the only desirable settlers. For our own parts, we do not see why a man who can afford to pay down on the nail for a farm of 400 or 500 acres and retain a sufficient balance in his banker’s hands to carry on the cultivation of his land, should not be equally welcome with the small capitalist. The fashionable complaint of many of the Opposition members some mouths ago was that while the Government Immigration Scheme provided for bping-

ing a class of laborers into the country, it did not provide for the introduction of capital; and that consequently a time would come when there would be plenty of hands to work, but no money to pay them. We must say wo admire the adroitness with which opposition fash ions change. Within a very limited range of time they have run through two phases : their pet was originally the agricultural laborer, who was to thrive on thirty or forty acres. Their kind and considerate sympathies turned from him to doleful anticipations of starvation of the railway laborer when all the railways are constructed; and now they have taken another class under their wings as deserving primary consideration, and arc placing them in front as a barrier to the construction of railways. If the land must be sold, would it not be more rational to withhold an area on each side of the line for a specific distance, until money is wanted to pay for the work ; and then to offer it in suitable blocks by auction, at such an upset price as is justified by its quality, and the facility of access to a market afforded by the construction of the line t What is taking place in Southland sufficiently points to the eagerness with which it would be bought up. Until wo see some such scheme proposed by the Opposition, we shall have no faith in either their ability or desire to serve the Province. We have full sympathy with the striving, hardworking man ; but we do not see that because he exists, the man of capital should be despised. According to the present Opposition fashion, he has only to become successful to be considered a nuisance in the Colony.