The Evening Star THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1874

Evening Star, Issue 3490, 30 April 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1874

The Address of his Honor the Superintendent should give satisfaction to all classes in the Province. Of course this is impossible, for no matter how prosperous a community, some amongst them are troubled with morbid fancies: they build walls of troubles for themselves, and ask their neighbors how to get over them, as if they were real and substantial, instead of being the dismal phantoms of their dismal brains. These gropers after evils that may never come will find many things in the Address to harass and perplex them. The increase of population, instead of decreasing, has increased the demand for labor, so they can ponder over the problem of how all these people are to be supported when all the works now in progress are completed. The Address may enable them to form an idea on this point that may not convince them, but which will give them a clue to the truth that “ work renders work necessary.” Industrial development is subject to certain laws. Make one main line of railway, and fifty others must be made to connect districts right and left with it. Construct the fifty railways to the right and left, and hundreds of feeders run into them. Each of these opens up some new resource : either coal, or wood, or even rich pastoral or agricultural country. We need not trace the picture further; the Address points to work done and work to be done, and, on the whole, presents a very different state of things from that which under the control of a faction rendered sales of land in blocks necessary to relieve the Province from a load of debt. So far from forcing sales of land now, the question is how to prevent the public estate passing into the hands of private speculators. The works in progress and required by the altered state of the country have raised the value of property so much that it is becoming a duty to see that the public interest is not sacrificed to private profit. His Honor remarked:—

I would strongly urge upon your consideration the expediency of raising the price of land, as contemplated under the provisions of the Waste Land Act. I feel persuaded that such a step, while it would greatly curtail land speculation, would in no wise check bona fide settlement. I submit that, with main roads and railroads penetrating the country in all directions, land is better worth L 5 an acre now than it was worth (5s when it was inaccessible. Certainly, if early settlers paid L2 an acre when there was not a road in the Province, that figure cannot fairly be considered too high how. It appears to me that jf future immigrants into the country, and those who will be from year to year gradually emerging from the labor market, as well as our children, are to have the opportunity of acquiring land, we are in duty bound to husband the public estate by raising the price, as has been partially done in the case of the Southland District, and so as to assimilate our terms to those of the neighboring Province of Canterbury,

The importance of this subject can hardly be overrated, for it is plain either by sale of, or on security of our land depends the future industrial evolution of the Province, if it is to be effected without Provincial taxation. The position of the Province of Auckland, and some other Provinces proves this. The early settlers of Otago have done their share of the hard work. If they got their land a< a low price they have had years of weary straggling to render the country prosperous. That they went the wrong way about their work, most of them may chance novr to see. We have no doubt bad they had better leaders ten years ago, Otago would have been further advanced than even at present. Their estates are now worth many times more than they gave foiP them, Otago’s trade contributes one-third of the whole consolidated revenue of the Colony, and the excess of Provincial receipts above expenditure last year was L 74:,800. It depends very much upon the clear-sightedness of the Executive of the future whether this rate of progress shall be checked or continued. The Superintendent has marked out a course which, if carried out with prudence and energy, will tend to further prosperity. There is much in the Address that will bear comment, but will be best dealt with as the different subjects are discussed.