The Globe. SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1878.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1359, 22 June 1878, Page 2

The Globe. SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1878.

The recently launched Ministerial organ in Wellington has no ordinary task set before it, A considerable portion of its space has of late been devoted to an attempted reconciliation of the two Ministerial policies. The other day a still more ambitious effort was essayed — that of justifying the conduct of the Premier in endeavouring to get the Land Bill vetoed at the end of last session. One would have thought the friends of Sir George would, by this time, have seen the propriety of doing their best to bury all recollection of that transaction, and trust to the chapter of accidents to avoid a debate on the subject during the coming session. But the Ministerial party themselves are evidently determined to keep the matter before the public. Our readers are, no doubt, familiar with the story as told by Sir George himself. It amounted in a few words to this—that the Laud Bill contained certain clauses which in his opinion gave undue advantages to the Canterbury runholders—- “ enormous advantages,” he said, “ for a long period of years, to the great injury of the population at large.” He pointed that fact out in the plainest possible language, ho said, to the Assembly, and urged an appeal to the constituencies, “before such heavy burdens were cast upon the colony.” But though defeated in his efforts in the Lower House, he still looked with hope to the Legislative Council. “ But when the said law got to the Legislative Council,” he went on, “ not only were the runs conferred on the Canterbury runholders for a period of ten additional years, that is thirteen years from the present time, but a clause which had been inserted by which people would have been allowed to take a part of their runs on deferred payments, was struck out, so that the Bill returned from the Legislative Council worse than it went up to that body, and it was then adopted by the House of Representatives in the form in which the Council sent it back.” “ The only means then left to him,” he said, “ by which he could still save the people of New Zealand from the increased taxation which for ten additional years it was intended to impose upon them, was by advising the Governor to exercise the right the law gave him, to disallow the Bill —which advice ho gave.” Sir G. Grey, moreover, claims that according to constitutional lawtheGoveruorr was bound to take that advice. There are two points contained in the above explanation —the Premier’s motives for advising the veto, and his constitutional right to do so. Is it a fact that the Land Act of last sassion gave unjust advantages to the Canterbury runholders ? Is it not the opinion of all who have studied the cpicstion, that the mode of assessing the value of those runs, proposed in the Act, will secure to the colony a larger revenue than would have been got had the licenses terminated in 1880. Such at any rate was the opinion of the Canterbury constituencies at the last election. Nor does the Act, as Sir G. Grey has represented, hand over the Canterbury runs to the present tenants till 1890. Provision is made in it by which after 1882 pastoral lands may be reserved and sold on deferred payments. As there is no limit to the quantity that can be reserved, it rests with the Government of the day to define their extent. It is in their power if they so wish it, to sot apart the whole of the Canterbury runs for sale on the above principle. How then, in the face of these facts, can anyone assert that the interests of the squatters have been preferred to those of the community at largo ? Before 1880 the runs will be assessed in the manner provided by the Act, and the present holders of the licenses will have the first refusal. But if they agree to give the increased price fixed, the pastoral tenants have no guarantee that they will be allowed to have undisturbed possession till 1890, They will bo liable, as at present, to bo bought out, or if they escape that, they may, any time after 1882, find their runs reserved for sale on deferred payments. What possible ground, then, has the Premier for the assertion that, by the Land Act, large sums of money have been “ put into the pockets of private individuals”? The statement is a gross libel upon the honor and integrity, not only of a majority of both Houses of Parliament, but of some of his own colleagues who voted for the Bill. The assertion, moreover, can only bo made plausible by a resort to his favourite mode of stating a

truth. In the passage quoted above, the assertion that ‘ a clause which had been inserted by which people would have been allowed to take a part of those runs on deferred payments was struck out,” would convey, to anyone unacquainted with the fact, the idea that the deferred payment system formed no part of the Land Act as far as those runs were concerned. Our readers of course know bettor. They are quite aware that, for all practical purposes, the Canterbury licenses terminate in 1882. No sane man, in purchasing a run, would calculate on undisturbed possession after that date, even though ho knew that it would not be bought up by the free selector. But it evidently did not suit Sir G. Grey’s plan to tell the plain unvarnished facts. He nowhere, of course, states that the principle of deferred payments is absolutely excluded—not at all; only that a clause, allowing people to take part of those runs on deferred payments, which was in the Bill when it loft the Lower House, was struck out in the Legislative Council, and that the Bill passed in the form in which the Council sent it back. He did not take the trouble to inform his hearers of the unimportant fact that the Bill, as it came from the Council, did contain a provision for deferred payments. It was not the actual clause which was in it when it left the House of Representatives. That was enough for the Premier’s purpose. Here was a fact, judiciously stated, which was sure to do noble service in winning applause and support throughout the colony, and the quotation from his speech at Nelson, which wo give above, shows what splendid use he made of it. An absolute misstatement of fact would not have been half so successful in misleading his audience, and in concealing the actual truth from them.