OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS?

Evening Star, Issue 3977, 23 November 1875, Page 2

OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS?

By C. W. Purnell. I. • The Abolition of Provinces Act is not likely to be a measure standing alone on the Statute Book. Its advocates have set the ball of change arolling, and none can do more than guess what direction it will take, or when it will stop. The constitution of the Legislative Council, which has hitherto been a theme for mere speculation, now presents itself as a problem requiring early, if not immediate solution. Then the land question, over which we have fought for years and years amid conflicts as apparently interminable and indecisive as those which long ages ago took place around the walls of Troy, suddenly assumes an aspectwhichbetokensthatthe final battle is at hand. That event, however, has only been hastened. Men have reached deeper social and political principles than they had attained when these Colonies were founded, and are getting impatient at the desultory fighting which has been going on between the mass of the community and the largo landholders. They want something more effective. They hare begun to see—in a glass darkly, as it were, yet still with a strong apprehension of the lineaments of the truth—what are the real rights of the State to the possession and control of its lands • and it is these feelings and perceptions which have made s© many persons look favorably upon the State leasing- system. The arguments used in support of th: i scheme have familiarised the public with one aspect of the relations between a State and its lands ; but those relations may be contemplated in

several lights. For the purposes of this treatise, four points of view will be sufficient. First, a State, through its governing body, may let out its lands on terms of military service—that is the feudal system ; secondly, it may lease them to tenants paying a money rental —that is, the “ leasing ” system j thirdly, it may sell the perpetual freehold to any person who chooses to buy the land for money, without limiting the area purchaseable by a single individual, which is the system prevailing in New Zealand ; and fourthly, it may sell the perpetual freehold to the first comer who is willing to pay the price asked for it, under the restriction that any individual or his family shall not possess beyond a certain acreage of land. The latter plan was advocated by me in a pamphlet published eighteen months since, entitled “An Agrarian Law for New Zealand.” The proposal provoked sharp criticism. Novel views in politics generally do, especially when they relate to fundamental questions besides which, in this instance, a great many persons’ toes were trodden upon, while a still larger number fancied themselves to be threatened with personal injury. Some one put it that I was attacking all the leading men of the country. The supposition was baseless, i I attacked immorality, and tyranny, | and greed of gain wherever exhibited, and careless whether my words touched high or low • but my sole object was to show how the future welfare of the entire community .was endangered by the presence of certain evils in its midst. Still my proposal was capable of being contorted from its natural shape, and those who deemed their craft was imperilled did not scruple to so twist it with little regard to. fair play. Two or three critics discussed it as though my avowed purpose was to advocate the abolition of manufactures ; a preposterous notion, which no word of what I wrote could reasonably be construed to mean. On the contrary, I had argued that by the greater independence of the workman, which would result from the adoption of correct agrarian principles, his intelligence would expand, he would become an artist instead of a mechanical drudge, and manufactures would attain a

higher excellence than is possible under a system which reduces him to a state of complete dependence upon his employer, and thus degrades his faculties. The question I propounded, and, so far as I know, it was the first time it had been propounded in the Colony, was— Are we not establishing in New Zealand a counterpart of that state of society which in England has produced pauperism and kindred evils, and will it not produce the same results here, and that, too, before very long 1 My remedy may be good or . bad, but who will undertake to deny the importance of the question 1 It goes to the root of all we are doing politically ; and if the proposition I have laid down be right and sound, no pooh-poohing will get rid of it, nor will a foolish shutting of the eyes to the approach of the enemy prevent him seizing us with a strong grasp when his day comes. My argument is the old one—“ You cannot sow thistles and reap figs.” If you scatter the seeds of pauperism broadcast over the land in due season you will reap pauperism ; and if the efficacy of the antidote which I suggest should be used against the latent poison in our political frame is disputed, those who object to its use are bound in duty to propose a better. Happily the public mind is becoming educated on this subject. When these views were first enunciated the idea that pauperism or aught in its shape could ever overtake New Zealand was ridiculed as being absurd ; yet I have since had the pleasure of finding certain of the newspapers wherein these hostile criticisms appeared either arguing in a similar strain or taking the fact as proved, and

the still greater pleasure of seeing so eminent a man as Sir George Grey vigorously warning the people of New Zealand that a state of society containing evils as bad as those which contaminate society in Great Britain impends over the Colony, and summoning them to use their utmost efforts to prevent its descent. The danger being admitted, there is hope that the safeguard will be erected. In the pamphlet referred to I directed my arguments' chiefly to these points (1), to prove that our present land system would result in the overcrowding of towns, and the deprivation of the poorer classes of their social independence, ultimately accompanied by pauperism ; (2), that the best safeguard against the occurrence of these evils "was a strict limitation of the size of freeholds ] and (3), that such a restriction would in the end produce the effect of raising the moral and intellectual tone of the entire community. As a minor point, it was also urged that the comparatively small quantity

of arable land in New Zealand rendered the limitation expedient. A different train of reasoning will now be pursued, and it will be contended that the practice of permitting individuals to acquire the fee simple of the soil, without limit as to area, by money purchase, is a contravention of the fundamental principles of the land laws of Great Britain and of the leading States of the Continent. The very spacious field of inquiry here opened up would require a bulky volume for its full treatment, and the only method to follow in a popular sketch like the present is to indicate the salient features of those laws, leaving the assertions made to be tested in the usual manner by reference to standard works. The argument will not, however, be confined to that point, but will support the enactment of an agrarian law for the reason, likewise, that the productivity of the soil would thereby be increased, and the territory of the State made to furnish Subsistence for a far denser population than it can maintain where the size of private domains is only limited by the bounds of the owner’s purse. {To be continued.)