The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3273, 16 August 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1873.

Adherence to English traditional notions of property in land, leads us in the Colonies into constant perplexity and unnecessary expense. If a man buys a few hundreds of acres, and in after years it is found necessary for public benefit to form a road through it, the cost to the public for the strip required is often more than the whole of the original purchase. If to form a railroad, then a sort of mania seizes the purchaser, and its value is magnified tenfold. He may form such extravagant notions that an Act of Parliament may be required to prevent Iris stopping the train. Many instances of this sort occurred in the valuations by individuals of their holdings on the Port Chalmers line of railway, and on that now in course of construction between Dunedin and the Clutha. How much more has been paid to these lucky landowners than their land is worth

cannot well be ascertained. Not only has the very uttermost been given, rather than proceed to expensive remedies, but arbitrations have been held, and heavy cost incurred in payment of assessors. The history of all these arbitrations would form a curious addition to our social economics. We do not know that we ought to blame the individuals for trying to get the best possible price. It is not every day that an old lady leasing a freehold, value five pounds, has a chance of claiming between two and three hundred pounds’ compensation for ten feet off her cabbage, garden ; and of putting the railway company to the expense of an arbitration that awarded her some twenty or thirty pounds, which went into her lawyer’s pocket. She had the happiness of doing her best to stop the train; as also had the man who claimed compensation for the loss of water frontage and jetty accommodation to a heavy amount, although his jetty could have been put up by two men in a day, and accommodated a boat capable of carrying two tons once or twice in a year or two. Just in the same way, a man owning a section, a corner of which stops the train to a coal pit, unless he comes down from his lofty pretensions, must be compelled to yield by Parliamentary pressure. All this arises from parting with the foe simple of the land. It has been allowed to pass away from public control, excepting on terms most disadvantageous to society. Whatever true property the holders had in it should be fairly and honorably paid for on resumption of possession by society. The old lady was fairly entitled to the value of her hedge and apple trees, and to have them placed in circumstances to return their usual quota of fruit; and the cockatoo to the value of his trumpery jetty and few shillings of wharfage dues, if ever he was entitled to any ; but beyond those realities, very little should be allowed for mere speculative or emotional values. Those who are called upon to yield back property in land to the Government for public benefit, are sharers in the increased prosperity resulting, and probably to a greater extent than anyone else. But complexities arising from parting absolutely with tire land crop up in other forms than in .cases of resumption by the State for public purposes. The question of what is bought is one that has been found a difficulty in all the Colonies. The question of mining on private property is an unsettled one in these Islands as well as in Australia. It is perfectly true that in selling land, as the precious metals are the rights of the Crown, they are not sold with it. But as the old ladygardener, the jetty owner, and the corner-section owner take leave to stop the train, the agriculturist claims the vight to stop the miner. The farmer says I bought the soil, and I will not have it defaced or removed. The miner replies, By my miner’s right I am entitled to gather the gold below the soil, and 1 claim the right to mine for it. The farmer has a perfect right to resist trespass, although in so doing he shuts up a mine of wealth, that, opened out, would prove a fortune to multitudes of miners or shareholders, and the Government is powerless to prevent his acting the part of the dog in the manger. He has no light to the gold, but he has the right to prevent anybody else getting it. Now, all this would be avoided if the Provincial estate were occupied by leaseholders, using the land for specific purposes, under certain special conditions of resumption by the State. Fictitious values would be, to some extent, guarded against; tenants would sooner see the advantage to themselves of developing the national resources; and the public would be vast gainers in the decreased cost, in a variety of ways, of works necessary to advance the interests of the community. If we have to pay smartly for them now, we must blame our imperfect notions of social economy.