THE PUBLISHED DAILY. THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1871.

Grey River Argus, Volume X, Issue 840, 6 April 1871, Page 2

THE Grey River Argus. PUBLISHED DAILY. THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1871.

Mr Frank Guinness, in a letter puhlishediu our Tuesday's issue, very correctly deduces from our leading article of the Ist instant, on the subject of paying for the construction of roads inland, that we "are somewhat, averse to the idea of alienating the waste lands of the Colony for the purpose of road making." We are willing to concede to the supporters df this system that it may in special cases, and under special circumstances, be carried out with advantage, but as a principVfor adoption in Weatland we are decidedly opposed to it. Our grounds of objection may generally be stated to be, first — That it is uneconomical ; and, second, that is likely to interfere with settlement. With regard to our first objection, we consider payment for roads in land to be unprofitable in two ways. To begin with, no contractor would accept land at £1 per acre, as cash that ia to say, he would require a much larger price for his work oh such terms than if he were to be paid in cash. And as very few persons could be found able to lock up this capital in this way, even if the ultimate profit were very considerable, it follows that there would be very little competition, and that the contractors would get pretty much their own price. We do not think we should exceed the truth if we were to assume that the County would have to pay fully 30 per cent, more for roads paid for in laud than if it paid cash. Then, again, it is highly improbable that contractors would take any land which the Government chose to offer them. They would expect to select

their land in the same manner as a cash purchaser, and we may look upon it as not unreasonable that they would make their selection on blocks, traversed by the roads they were making; The result of this would be, that they would obtain at a pound per acre land which by meam of the road would probably fetch double the price at open auction. The question may be submitted relatively thus : — Supposing a certain road was made on the land payment system at a cost of .£SOOO, for which the contractor took land on the line of road at £1 per acre. The public would losefirst .£ISOO, the difference between a cash payment and one made in land ; second it would lose at least 10s per acre on 5000 acres, the increased value of the land through the existence of the road, which would be an additional £2500, making in all a sacrifice of £4000. It may be said that we are exaggerating, bnt we know that at a recent land sale an average of more than double the upset price was obtained, simply because a road was being made through a certain district. This loss to the public just represents the profit that would be made by: the contractor, but if we were to transfer his profit to the County the difference to the public would actually be £8000 — that is the difference between making a profit of £4000 or losing that amount. We say nothing of the impolicy of throwing large blocks of the best available land into one hand. The evil consequences of this feature of land disposal have been so severely felt in Canterbury and Otago that we need not allude further to this branch of the subject. But we admit that under special circumstances the County would be justified iii ever sacrificing its estate at half its real value, but we must confess that we not yet recognise the existence of those circumstances. The road to Ross, alluded to by Mr Guinness would be a great advantage— any road is anywhere — but it is not an urgent necessity. The duty of the local government is to follow up the settlers by roads. Every sixpence of the land revenue should be devoted to, this purpose, but we do not consider it to be a wise or economical policy to artificially stimulate the disposal of land at a cost which the circumstances of the County cannot afford. In any case we would restrict the payment for roads in land by simply issuing land scrip entitled to be used at land sales at the rate of LI, but would not alienate the choice bits of land to contractors at the upset price. Roads are very necessary things, but we may go too fast even in that direction. Westland's policy for the present must be a cautious one. It cannot afford to rush headlong into speculation.