Untitled

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 39, 29 September 1891, Page 2

If the colony had only a tew clear headed! business men on the Treasury Benches, instead of crack-brained faddists, the Economist, the leading financial paper in England, would not have had occasion 5 to inform its readers (we are told by cable) that " contracts which have been entered into for the purchase of land in New Zealand have been cancelled owing to the most inequitable Land and Income Tax r Assessment Bill adopted in the late session" of our Parliament. This will i prove a direct hindrance to the investment of English capital in New Zealand for some time, and may- in the near ! future lead to the sacrifice of interests already vested in the colony. In fact in ' Auckland the scare has began already, since the cablegram came to hand.

In an article entitled " The Evolution oi a Journalist," the Sydney Bulletin says : " The utter and well-founded contempt in which the experienced newspaper man holds ninety nine per cent of politicians is too deep to be expressed in words." On the other hand the writer goes on to say of the newspaper writer : " His intimacy with the ' great ones ' is all hollow, and ' the personages ' really , regard him as a flunkey, though they : treat him with (sometimes cold and some- > times cordial) politeness." He finally i advises the young journalist to " get on a r leading Ministerial journal, keep fairly steady, and grovel to the Premier. Then tap him for a boss Government billet — not on Hansard though ; the work there is too hard ; it is hard enough to break a a man's soul. That is the game ! It is played every year. The prizes have ranged from '£"300 to £1200 a year. But, in thus 'working the oracle,' you miss the very aim and object of your youthful aspirations. You cease to be a journalist.

By the slaughter of their famous Land Bill, with which Ministers hoped to do so much to revolutionise the land tenure, this district has escaped a danger which would have done uiuch harm by reducing the value of landed property. By a clause in the Bill it was provided that the Native Minister should haye power to put landless Maoris on Crown Lands, and the Coal Creek Block, where, it will be remembered, a lot of Maoris went up to make selections a few months ago, was one of the Blocks intended to be specialty allotted. By the failure of the Bill the settlers already on the adjacent lands, have escaped the presence of neighbors whose probable contiguity they looked on as a calamity. We are aware tint a number of men, who are desirable settlers, have for some time been casting longing eyes on the Block in question, and we are glad to know that they haye now some chance of realising their hopes. We have no objection to landless natives having homes provided for them, but wp think they would do much better if settled on land among their own people.