The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 19, 1875.

Evening Star, Issue 3689, 19 July 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 19, 1875.

Although there is little in the news by the Alhambra that directly affects New Zealand, the struggle in the Legislative Assembly to prevent further alienation of land from the Crown is important, should it succeed, for it not only affects Victoria but is likely to influence every Australasian Colony. One of our Northern contemporaries condemns the movement, and asserts that ail history proves the proposed system to be founded on a fallacy; although not an instance is given of its ever having been tried intelligently. Why a plan should fail when administered by a Government, and yet prosper when managed by individuals, is one of those mysteries that should be clearly demonstrated before condemning the proposition. But precisely the same may be affirmed respecting the sale of lands by a Government. The market price is seldom obtained ; for no sooner does landed property pass into private hands than by some magical process its value becomes magnified, and what was parted with by the country for ten shillings or a pound an acre, very commonly becomes double the value before a spade or a plough enters the ground. The true lesson that we derive from history is that every petty lord over forty or fifty thousand acres has been able to find tenants who pay him sufficient for the use of his land to enable him and his family to live in luxury without doing a stroke of work. So ample usually is the revenue that a handsome income can be given to a competent manager, who takes all the drudgery of account keeping, collecting rents, and seeing after improvements off the landowner’s hands. This condition of affairs has been evolved in Europe through successive centuries and from peculiar social institutions. Stripped of all the trappings with which age has invested the landlordism of Europe, it is a remnant of a period of violence, injustice, and tyranny : and in England the Houses of Lords and Commons may be termed a federation of the owners of landed estates for the conservation of titles to, and special privileges connected with the soil. Society at Home has become accustomed to this state of affairs, and tolerates even its abuses. Although they have to pay millions a year for imported corn, they look with pride on the beautiful parks, stocked with deer they may admire but not touch ; and tolerate oppressive game laws, which lead to destruction of food for the special amusement of a privileged class. But we in the Colonies, who all start on a dead level, have really to ask ourselves—Are such institutions fair to one another or suited to our new condition ? Are they the best calculated to secure settlement and a proper use of the soil, or cannot some systembedevised based upon sound principles, that will secure to all classes that fair share of the profits of the common estate, in immunity from taxation, to which they are entitled? It is a glaring mistake 'O imagine that .they alone who use the ‘■oil are interested in the question, It is the common food producer of the

country as well as providing the raw material for all industry, and the revenue from its use should be common revenue. When the fee simple is parted with a monopoly to the extent of the area sold is given to the purchaser, and supposing any ene, or say half a score capitalists wealthy enough to buy up the land of the Colony, they would claim the right to dictate the purposes to which it should be applied. At will they could exclude miners, despoil farmsteads, devote pastures to feeding game instead of sheep, and reduce the whole country to a wilderness. No doubt such an idea is preposterous—so is every reductio ad ahsurdum —but it shows how foolish, on a large scale, is conduct that is every day practised on a small one, and which, as far as it goes, is equally foolish. It shows that while there are interests debarring landowners from such supremo folly, they are invested with the power of perpetrating it \ and the great complaint in Victoria is, that land is passing rapidly into the hands of runholders who quickly destroy all traces of settlement, and are reducing the whole country to a number of gigantic sheep farms. Victoria has been for years struggling against this tendency, and has tried every nostrum prescribed by land quacks to prevent the dreaded evil. Whether leasing, if adopted, will succeed will depend very much upon the honesty with which the system is administered. In that honesty we have not much faith. Very little has been shown by any class thus far, and there is no reason to imagine a sudden improvement has taken place.