The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1874

Evening Star, Issue 3486, 25 April 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1874

A LARGE number of strangers were in town to" day to apply for land on M’Nab’s run, and to attend the sale of sections on the Waipahee and Glenkenich districts. Ninety-nine applications were received on deferred payments for a block en M'NAB’srun. Thirteen sections at Waipahee, Glenkenich district, realised L 4,100, or an average of about L2 4s per acre—the lowest price was LI 5s and the highest L 3 lls. The Otago and Southland Investment Company bought all the sections, with the exception of one which fell to Mr. Roberts.

Such was the telegraphic information from Invercargill, published on Tuesday. It is not very clear what is meant, but assuming it to mean that the whole was bought by the Otago andjSouthland Investment Company, such has been the result of the experiment of a sale of land on deferred payments at Invercargill. It does not matter much to our view of the subject whether the whole or part of the land is referred to, so we will assume, for the sake of argument, they have bought all. We do not know the rulesand regulations of theOtagoand Southland Investment Company. Possibly it may be an association designed to help careful and struggling men to settle upon the land by advancing money on favorable terms. If so, its object is good, and it may therefore work well. But whatever its object, the title indicates other designs,' and points to its being an association of

moneyed men clubbing funds together to make a profit on their subscribed capital. To this there can be no objection. As the law prescribes the conditions on which land may be held, and has created it “property,” no fault ought to be found with any man, or association of men, acquiring as many acres as they can, and disposing of them on as profitable terms as possible. If fault is to be .found at all, it is with ourselves as a community, for not ascertaining clearly and distinctly what is the truest and most certain way of settling people on the land. The inference that must inevitably be drawn from our reading of the telegram is, that ninety-eight applicants for land have been disap-

pointed, and that a company with capital was in a position to monopolise the whole thrown open for sale, on terms that were considered favorable to small capitalists. It fdoes not matter to the investigation of the working of‘the system whether, through the operations of the society, as many persons are settled upon the land as would have been, had not the capitalist society interfered with the course of sale. The inference is plain, that they were either able to give a higher price than would otherwise have been realised, or that they were in a position so to influence the biddings as to lead to the conviction that it was useless to bid against them. If the first hypothesis is correct, it may be said that the revenue is the gainer, and the clients of the investment society the losers; if the second, the revenue is the loser, and most probably the society itself the gainei’. Now what is true of a society is true of an individual capitalist: so long as ovir ideas of regulating the occupation of land by sale is concerned, no matter what safeguards may be contrived to prevent monopoly of it, the capitalist will contrive to get hold of it, and make his profit through its sale or lease. Every effort to prevent this has failed. In all our most stringent land regulations, loopholes have been either designedly admitted or have been discovered. Human ingenuity has tried in vain to devise schemes to limit the power of capital as applied to the acquirement of land. Capital has foiled, and will continue to foil, every effort based upon misconception of the relation of man to the soil. The land owners always have been, and always will be the rulers of the earth ; they seat or unseat ministries or monarchs, sway councils, and mould and

fashion laws. It is somewhat amusing to observe the changed tone of a democrat after he becomes a landowner. Prior t6 that, large landed proprietors are denounced by him as monopolists seeking to enslave the people. All his sympathies are with the working men; all his efforts are directed to placing them upon the soil. He is

anxious to see the country cut into forty or fifty acre sections, and to return to the good old times we read of before England’s woes began, when every rood of land sustained a man. But when he becomes a landed proprietor, .even if it be but of fifty acres, his ideas change. He then wants cheap labor, and f'-ee pasture for cattle. He is one

with the great ruling power, the landocracy. Who for one moment can believe that the Roxburgh people would ever have made the noise they have done, and have been betrayed into the factious course they have adopted, had they been allowed to possess the property of Messrs Cargill and Anderson or Mr Clarke’s purchase, or the Island Block % Had they had ■ their land-craving satisfied at their own price, Mr Holloway would never have heard their names, but would have gone away concluding there was not such another happy people upon earth as those who dwell in Otago. There seems to be, however, a remarkable contrast between the people of Southland and those of Roxburgh. We have not heard of any grumbling that the Otago Loan and Investment Society have monopolised the land opened for sale, whether merely the thirteen sections at Waipahee or the whole of the land mentioned. Southland seems quite content with things as they are, and, right or wrong, Mr Holloway. not likely to be memorialized in that quarter.