Old Soldiers

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 35, 2 September 1886, Page 2

Old Soldiers

The present Government seem determined to spare no reasonable effort to have justice done to Old Soldiers and Volunteers in the matter of their land j claims. The commissions which have I been from time to time appointed in I the past, have been comparative failures. There are hundreds of exGel- j lent mon and useful settlers who are j laboring under a strong feeling of ' discontent, because their just claims j for land, earned under the conditions i of their enlistment in the several re- ' gimonts or companies doing military , service in the colony, havo been re- j jected or thrust aside, owing to the | absence of some vexatious formality, j or the presence of some trifling irrog- i ularity in their papers. If the claims j had been refused jutint blanc, and the j claimants had explained to them the ! causes of refusal iv each individual case they would have been satisfied, j and assigned their misfortune to its j proper cause, viz., their own want of | prudence. But this was never done, > therefore the dissatisfaction which ! obtains. We hope that in tbe new I Commission old claims will be allowed I to be re-opened so as to give an opportunity for defects to be remedied I and evidence supplied, which was I before not available, or of the necessity for which the claimants were in j ignorance.