Absentees and Fences

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 133, 9 June 1888, Page 2

Absentees and Fences

A case has been brought under our notice where peculiar hardship is inflicted on an industrious settler by his being so unfortunate as to hold land adjoining that of an absentee owner. Be is desirous of putting up a dividing or boundary fence between ; the two properties, aud bas gone j through all the legal formalities required by the Fencing Act of 1881, to make his neighbor liable for a half share of the necessary cost. Uuluck- • -iiy for him, however, the said ru-igli- j bor, who lives in the Old Country, is J only represented in New Zealand by an agent who has no authority to pay the required amount, and who cannot be sued on behalf of his principal. j The latter, in common with his kind, j shows considerable reluctance in ex- • pending money on the. improvement of his land, preferring no doubt to profit by the "unearned increment" made by the industrious settlers who have the misfortune to own lands adjacent. The Fencing Ac"t 1881 provide-, in clause 14, for th« recovering, of one

i half of the actual cost of making a | feaee from persons residing in the Colony, but lip facilities are given for proceeding against absentees. In our , opinion the most expeditious and, at the same time, simple plan would be ; to make the land primarily liable for : the cost of dividing fences, thus putting the actual or ostensible owner in the second place. If this mode were adopted a heavy drag on bona fide settlers, caused by vexatious and costly delays, would be removed, and, absentees induced, perhaps, to fulfil their : implied obligations, put their lands under cultivation, and thus make them a profit instead of a loss to the state. No man would be so foolish as to allow a portion of his land to be compulsorily sold if he could possibly prevent it— even by paying his dues to a neighbor.