OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS?

Evening Star, Issue 4021, 15 January 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS?

By C. W. Purnell.

(Continued.)

Doubtless in other countries than New Zealand rich men of this character frequently exercise a highly pernicious influence; but not satisfied with enduring the evils which prevail elsewhere, we are heaping up fresh troubles for ourselves by bestowing all the honor and power of the country upon these bad productions of modern society. Not content with letting them have a large share, we must needs give them pretty nigb the whole. Money, no matter how got, is becoming the sole passport to the principal public offices —to all the public offices, indeed, which carry any political influence with them. The Upper House of Assembly has been openly surrendered to the rich class, on the plea that it should represent "property." The Constitution Act does not say that it should represent " property." The disease, too, is getting worse. The character of our rulers, great and small, has sadly deteriorated of late, and the body politic has been diiven along the high road of moral degradation with accelerated speed during the last three or four yearß by the reckless loan expenditure of the General Government, originally devised by unscrupulous land and mercantile speculators' for their

personal benefit, and sinoe continued amid their frantic shouts and abase of all who objected to their proceedings. The lowermost stratum, morally and intellectually speaking, is being elevated to the top. That will tell in time* The Colony sustains a direct loss by allowing its affairs to be managed by those least capable of administering them, and an indirect but perhaps greater one by the crushing of the energies of its best citizens. It is sometimes urged, in response to regrets at our lack of culture and the undue honor paid to vulgar and base* minded men because they are rich, that "we hare no leisured class in. the Colony." That, however, is begging the question. A leisured class dees not exist simply because there is such an insatiable grasping after wealth, and so much honor is paid to it that men never think of retiring from business until pallida Mors, 'who

yEquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres imperatively commands them to do so. There are plenty of men in the Colony richer than three-fourths of the leisured class at Home and in the prime of life who would form a leisured class under the influence of a healthy public opinion, but they see that the only path to distinction lies through the golden gate, and they consequently seek no other. ' Their sons are brought up on the same principle. How many Colonial-born:, young men, whose parents are in easy /, circumstances, are devoting themselves ' to any nobler pursuit than that of making money—and to that alone? Has the reader, being himself an old colonist and capable .of judging, met with one% Nevertheless, I do not know a country on the face of the ' globe which offers more facilities for the development of the higher faculties of the mind and the rearing up of a truly distinguished community than New Zealand. Socially, ~ it is unhampered by the ties which are woven through long ages; politically, ■* its people enjoy the utmost freedom; aesthetically, it contains untrodden fields of research in the brightest regions. Who that has seen the lofty and rugged mountains of the Southern Alpß, with their snowy tops melting in the sky, trending away into the illimitable distance ; or penetrated their deep and lorest-clad gorges, with roaring torrents weltering down from ihe everlasting glaciers; or visited the sounds on the West Coast, with their rooky walls shooting up into the heavens, and their deep pellucid water lying still, close sheltered from the storm which rages on the wide Pacific but a few miles off; or sailed along the southern shores of Cook's Strait, gazing on the - picturesque hills, wooded to the water's edge, and casting their shadows upon the quiet bays and the charming islets that lie scattered everywhere about the water; or has roamed through the dense forests of the North Island, with their glorious pine trees and fern and palm groves, and clear streams gurgling amongst the boulders, and sweet retreats fit for fairies; or has looked from the heights of the Coromandel peninsula upon those wonderful amphitheatres of rock and hill and grove which there lie exposed to view, and the ocflan, in the far distance, with dark green islands resting like gems upon itspurplebosom—who thathas witwitnessed these scenes, or many, many others in!NewZealand,butmustrecognise that this country is endowed with charms enough to kindle the imagination to its liveliest mood, and to produce poets and painters and followers in every walk of art of the highest excellence! '

My theory is supported by the census returns, which disclose the fact that already the population of the towns is augmenting in a vastly greater ratio than that of the country. This is seen by comparing the tables of the census taken in 1871, with the returns of that taken in 1874. To appreciate their meaning we must keep in mind the circumstances of New Zealand : that it is a country where manufactures are only budding into life, and where millions and millions of acres of land are lying waste and still belonging to the Crown, During the period of three years under notice, considerable efforts were made to increase the agricultural population, not, indeed, by the General Government, which contented itself with shooting the human sweepings of Europe into our ports in order to supply the demand for cheap labor; but by the Provincial Governments, who, urged on by the popular cry, secured powers from the General Assembly to throw open blocks of land for sale on deferred payments, and to reserve tracts for special settlement. All such efforts, though excellent in their way, must, however, fail of their end while the root of the cancer is left untouched. The sufferings of the patient may be mollified, but unless the source of the malady be reached, he will succumb at last. So here. Freehold estates of undue magnitude derange the entire system of the body politic. There may be Grown land unoccupied, but that is not to the purpose. Great freeholds and the immoderate growth of towns are correlatives, and the two swell as the alienation of the soil from the Crown goes on. A large freehold seems to absorb the little ones by a species of at* tractive force. So the bigger a town gets the more rapidly it distances its rival. (To be continued.)