The Lyttelton Times.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 55, 24 January 1852, Page 5

The Lyttelton Times.

January 24, 1852. Our worthy friend, the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Middle District of the Middle Island has again had an attick of the morbus scribendi. Ordinary minds would have despaired of extracting amusement out of so dry a subject as a " Schedule of applications for sheep and cattle runs on Crown Lands," but the gallant colonel, in a few explanatory notes, contrives to introduce into it a good deal of quiet £un. The scarcely concealed irony of his remarks 'Sisplays the Commissioner in a new light. What has occurred to tincture his mind with disappointment,—whether it be the irreverent manner in which his former efforts are generally spoken of, —or whether they are not so highly appreciated at head quarters as they deserve —we know not; but his present object would seem to be to throw as much ridicule as he decently can upon the government pasturage regulations, and to hint how the laws may be evaded which he is appointed to enforce. It appears by the Notice advertised last week, that the applicants for runs are to send in "reports upon the runs which after due examination they have finally fixed upon." These runs are to state the form and boundaries of the runs, and the number of sheep they are capable of containing, recollecting that no run is to contain more than 25,000 sheep. " Thus," the Commissioner facetiously argues, —that is by the sending in of these " .Reports,"—" an unreasonable monopoly of the best pasturage, and extent of frontage, is, injustice to applicants in general, prevented." So the security against a monopoly of the pasturage is to be found in the reports of the applicants upon the capabilities of the runs they apply for. But it appears by the next sentence that "such stockowners as are desirous of occupying * more than one run, can at once apply for others." The monopoly of pasturage is especially prevented by telling the stockowners, —" Never -2 mind the regulation as to limiting your run ; if you want fifty or a hundred square miles of country, send in half-a-dozen applications or more, instead of one ; only take care that each application must state that the run can only feed 25,000 sheep, and you are quite safe; no particular enquiry will be made. The commissioner will visit you ' as soon as the licenses are issued,' —not before, —so you see the law is easily evaded." Now no one ever doubted that the law could be, and would be evaded; as all laws must which unwisely endeavour to affix limits to commercial enterprise ; but it has a singularly droll effect to see the best mode of evasion pointed out by the executive officer of the law. The gallant Colonel seems a little to dread the prospect of iS bushing it" on his travels of inspection. He promises the squatters a visit, but touehingly begs them to be " prepared accordingly,"—if not a warm bath, and slippers after the day's ride, at least some white bread instead of damper, and a clean and dry opossum rug. But the funniest part of these notes is the quaint endeavour to do a bit of business indirectly in the sale of rural land, —that unfortunate drug of which theCominissioner has to dispose. The appetite of the public has already been tempted by the generous offer of the highest " Peak" of the Kaikoras, and of the shores of Timaru, where ships subside ; but all to no purpose. The besotted public were blind to their interests—there was not a single rise ; so the unwearied Commissioner now tries a new bait. "Should the occupant of a run wish to purchase from the Crown from fifty to eighty acres of it i as rural land for a homestead," and will only ' intimate the same, the Crown Grant shall be ready in no time. Some of our readers may remember a shop in Fleet Street, said to have been once the residence of Heury the Eighth, now occupied by a peaceful citizen who cuts off hair instead of heads. The specialty of the esi tablishment has been immortalized in Punch. If you go there to have your hair cut, your egress is let and hindered by ihe myrmidons of the Master Barber, who torment ybu to purchase soap, perfumes, toothbrushes, razors, dressing cases, &c, and you are in luck if you escape with the loss of a dozen shillings in the purchase of what you don't want. Our friend the Commissioner must surely have been an apprentice in that celebrated emporium. You go to him to hire his pasturage, and he says " You want a run, Sir. Certainly Sir. Apply for a dozen, Sir.

Government regulations very cheap. Will you take a bit of rural land along with it ? Allow me to show you a nice homestead? Crown grant all ready, Sir. May I say fifty acres, Sir, or eighty acres?" f££lf it be really true that his Excellency is about to pay us a visit, we do most cordially hope there will be an end put at once to all this tomfoolery. But the last paragraph of Colonel Campbell's notification demands graver comment. He announces that he has removed his office and residence from Christchurch to Akaroa, and that all communications are to be addressed to him there. This is the consummation of absurdity. Akaroa is the remotest place in the district from the locality to which Colonel Campbell's business relates. It is the most inaccessible to all the public concerned. If the Commissioner is to live at Akaroa, an expence of about five pounds must be incurred by the stockowner every time he may be compelled to call at his office; and the Commissioner may at any time require his attendance upon the most frivolous pretext. Christchurch and Lyttelton are ordinary places of business for all squatters, especially Lyttelton. The squatter must visit Lyttelton to transact his ordinary business—business with the merchants, with the bank, with the post office:—whereas he could have no conceivable business at Akaroa, except with this tiresome and eccentric Commissioner. The journey from Lyttelton to Akaroa occupies two days; it involves a very severe walk over country which is inaccessible to horses, or a voyage /which may occupy an indefinite time in a small coasting craft of from 10 to 20 tons burden. The removal of the Commissioner's office to Akaroa is a most intolerable tax upon our friends outside the Canterbury block, which we do not for one moment believe Sir George Grey will sanction or allow.

So much had we written when the news arrived that all the Government pasturage regulations bad been swept away, and all proceedings under the recent Ordinance stopped: so the Commissioner's occupation is gone. Alas poor Yorick, —where be your gibes now, your flashes of merriment, your notifications, that were wont to set the settlement in a roar?

We beg pardon ; Colonel Campbell's occupation is not gone. He is still to receive £300 a-year out of the revenues of this settlement for a very inefficient endeavour to do it all possible injury by forming rival settlements at both sides of it.

The most prominent feeling after perusing the Proclamation by his Excellency, and the letter from Earl Grey, which we print in another column, is one almost amounting to despair. The system under which we live is so enormously unjust and absurd, that one really is at a loss to know what arguments to use : to men who can support or tolerate such a system all argument seems hopeless.

The Local Government of New Zealand passed a law a few months ago relating to the complicated difficulties which, had grown up around the land question in the colony. A system was settled—it may have been a bad one —it may have been passed by an ill-construct-ed and ill-informed Government—but it was a system. It was put in force. It was the law of the land. A multitude of contracts were made under it. Scrip was issued, bought, and sold. Pasturage runs were taken up, and capital invested on the faith of the Government.

All at once a ship arrives, bringing the news that while the Local Government was passing one law, the Home Government was passing another law ; and as the Imperial Government always overrules the Local Government, all that has been done in the colony for the last six months is rudely swept away—financial arrangements are disorganized—contracts are broken— all faith in the government of the country is utterly annihilated. We forbear to discuss which of the laws is the best, the home or the local manufacture. In our minds, everything falls into insignificance, compared with the glaring example thus offered of the radical defects of our whole Colonial Government. What has occurred upon the land question has occurred upon other questions, and will occur again and again. Nor has any policy yet propounded by Government athome in tbesmallest degree recoguized the evil or promised its abatement.

The evil is this. A want of a clear definition of the respective jurisdictions of the Home and the Local Government. I 1; is idle to give us

representative institutions. It is plain nonsense to quarrel about the form of the Local Government, so long as that Government is practically a cypher—so long as its laws maybe disallowed by the Colonial Office, or suspended and overridden by acts of the Imperial Parliament. We have ever held that the first, and immeasurably the most important feature of Government is this, that it shall he local. A good Government is of vast importance, but a good Government is useless if it be not omnipotent within its own jurisdiction.

What we mean explicitly is, that in the constitution about to be conferred on New Zealand, there ought to be a special recital of the subjects upon which the Imperial Parliament may legislate for the colony, and a declaration that upon all other subjects Parliament should have no authority whatsoever, —that upon all other such subjects, the Local Government constituted should have uurestricted and irresponsible authority to legislate. If this be not obtained, there can never be an end to the confliction of the home and local legislatures.

In another column we print an article from the Wellington Independent on the question of the sale of land. The Independent recommends that the colonists should memorialize Parliament to lower the upset price of lands in New Zealand.

There is nothing 'of so much importance at the present moment as unanimity of opinion on the part of the colonists in any recommendations or petitions sent to England. And we are sure the Independent will cordially agree with us in sinkingallminordifference?toobtain this unanimity. Now although we might not all agree to lower the price of land, we should all agree in this, that the whole land question should be transferred to the colony. 11 is quite possible thut one settlement may wish to sell its land for os. the acre, and another may choose to ask 01. Would not the fairest plan be, that the Provincial Legislature of each settlement should fix the price for the land within its own district? There is nothing really gained by a uniformity of price. In fact, the present system of Government does not provide for such uniformity, for it sells by auction, and therefore contemplates a variation of price in different localities. We object to the fixing of any price at all, upset or uniform, in England. Why deal with land other thau with all marketable goods? If we could get 10/. an acre at Canterbury, why should we not fix that as the price of our land. If we sold no land at the fixed price, we should soon find out that we were by far the greatest sufferers, and if the goverment were really a representative government, public opinion would soon operate to reduce the price to the real marketable value of the land.

What we would therefore venture to suggest is this, that we should all petition Parliament that the limits of each settlement should be defined, and that the waste lands in each should be vested in the Legislature of the Province, to be disposed of as it thought proper. It may be said the sale of land by the Canterbury Association violates this condition. So it does. But the Canterbury Association, as we have all along affirmed, is acting in an exceptional manner to promote the foundation of a settlement in the best way it can,inj:he absence of all colonizing energy on the part of the Colonial Government. But we should not hesitate a moment in advising the transfer of the administration of the land from the Canterbury Association to the Provincial Government of Canterbury, such Government being bona fide representative.

It may be said that the charge of the New Zealand Company's debt on the land fund of New Zealand is an obstacle to this arrangement. It is not a difficulty ;itis a mere detail. If the land fund ought to be charged with that debt at all, which we greatly doubt, the share of the debt to be borne by each settlement might easily be adjusted by the General Legislature of New Zealand, at the time when it assigns the limits to each settlement.

The last Gazette for ISSI announces the appointment of Capt. Simeon to be Resident Magistrate for Lyttelton and Christchurch, Capt. Parsons to be Haarbour-Master, Mr. W. Eades to be Landing-Waiter at Port Victoria, and John Boys, E^q., to be Surveyor of Crowu Lands for the Middle District of the Middle Island.

[Fro/M the Government Gazette, Jan. 13.} Colonial Secretary's Office, Wellington, January 9, 1852. His Excellency the Governor-in-Chief has been pleased to 'direct the publication of the following despatch from Earl Grey, dated the Bth of August, 1851, together with the enclosed Act of the 14th and loth Vict. c. 86, intituled " An Act to regulate the affairs of certain settlements established by the New Zealand Company in New Zealand." His Excellency has further directed the publication of the Terms of Purchase and Pasturage of Land in the settlements of Wellington, New Plymouth, and Nelson, which are brought into force by the Act of Parliament aforesaid. And' His Excellency directs it to be notified, that all proceedings under the Ordinance of the Legislative Council of New Zealand, Sess. XL No? 15, intituled " The New Zealand Company's Land Claimants' Ordinance," will for the present be stopped, and that the same course will be followed in the Province of New Munster,with respect to the rules and regulations for the issue of pasture and timber licenses, and for the occupation of the waste lands of the Crown, which regulations are for the present superseded by those now "published. - —~HBy his Excellency's command, Alfred Domktt, Colonial Secretary. (Copy.) Downing Street, August 8, 1851. Sir, —Willi reference to a series of despatches, which I addressed to you on the 19th March last, on the subject of the management of the affairs of the New Zealand Company's Settlements: I now transmit to you six copies of an Act for the regulation of* the affairs of those settlements, which has just received her Majesty's assent. < 2. This Act has by no means determined all the questions which may arise with respect to those settlements, in so satisfactory a manner as I could have wished. But inasmuch as the terms of purchase were held by the Law advisers of the Crown to be binding on her Majesty as contracts of the New Zealand Company, her Majesty's Government did not consider it to be competent to them to get rid, as fully as might, perhaps, have been desirable for all parties, of the impediments to the uniformity of management of the Crown lands of the colony which those contracts create, without the assent of the other parties to the contract, namely, the land purchasers, which at this distance it was impossible to secure. 3. The Act, however, leaves it in the power of her Majesty's Government to make terms and regulations for the management of the hinds comprised within the settlements of Wellington, New Plymouth, and Nelson; but not so as to alter the price at which they may be offered to purchasers. This must remain" fixed by the terms now in force in each settlement respectively. 4. Considering the great amount of land in and near the settlements, which is now in private hands and can consequently be disposed of at any price, I cannot but feel that there is little or no prospect of completing the settlements on the original terms. And if the settlers are of the same opinion, and are willing to have the price so reduced, I cannot doubt that an unanimous or general expression of this sentiment on their behalf, will be sufficient to enable her Majesty's Government to obtain from Parliament on another occasion a relaxation of this still existing restriction. 5. In other respects the modification of the existing terms will be in your power : and you are authorised by her Majesty to make (by yourself or through the intervention of the Lieutenant-Governor) any such modifications in your discretion, subject to the ultimate approval of her Majesty's Government. But this is a power which you are not to exercise except with the general assent, ascertained in such manner as you may think most advisable, of the settlers themselves. You will remember that they established, themselves in the settlements under the inducements afforded them by the terms in question : and that although, from the difficulty of giving them in their unincorporated state any powers by Act of Parliament, it lias been found more convenient to take those powers for her Majesty's Government alone, it is not the less necessary that their interests should not only be fully considered but their opinions also consulted andacted on. And if any scheme can be devised by which the management of the

internal affairs of the settlements and distribution of the funds can be placed in their own hands, I shall have great satisfaction in entertaining it. 6. Power is also given you to determine the local boundaries of the settlements, a power which in my opinion you already possessed, and as to the exercise of which I have addressed you before, but which it was desirable to confirm by Act of Parliament. 7. You are also authorised to "close and determine the affairs "of the Settlements. This is a power only to be exercised in concurrence with the Settlers themselves, If they shall in any settlement determine in such a manner as to leave no doubt of the general sentiments prevailing among them, that the original scheme as devised by the New Zealand Company ought no farther to be carried into execut:.on, but that the settlement should cease and become included under one common administration with the other Crown Lands of the colony, you are empowered to accede to their wishes. But this is a power on no account to be exercised unless with their full concurrence, nor without prior consultation with the Secretary of State. 8. The remaining clauses of the Act relate to the management of the Nelson Trust Fund. The circumstances under which that fund arose are described in the recitals, and you will observe that its amount is as yet unascertained It is to be administered by a Board of Trustees. But it was not thought advisable, in the absence of particular local knowledge, to insert in the Act particular provisions of the nature of those described in Sec. 5, as to the conduct of the trust. Power to enact these necessary provisions is left instead to the Local Legislature, and it will be necessary they should be speedily exercised; but for this purpose you or the Lieutenant-Governor will consult with the nominated Trustees themselves, to whom it will be necessaiy that a copy of the Act should be transmitted, and their attention immediately invited to its piovisions. 9. Unless it is the strong wish of the trustees themselves, or the Settlers generally, that any control or supervision over the accounts, or over the appropriation of the Trust Fund should be reserved to the Local Government, it is certainly not advisable that any provision giving it such control should he inserted in these laws. The Local Government should he ready to render the trustees any assistance (not involving expence to the community), which is really desired by them: but it is far better that the responsibility for the management of this fund should be towards Purchasers themselves, who are the parties interested. You will observe that the power to make laws for this purpose is given to the General Legislature, but with power to delegate it to that of the province. In the uncertainty which prevails, and must for the present prevail, as to the ultimate form and powers of the Provincial Legislatures, I have thought that this provision will best meet all the circumstances of the case.

10. On the subject of the expence of administering these settlements, I have nothing to add to the discretion given in my dispatch of March 19th, circumstances remaining the same. So long as the receipt of Land Revenue in these settlements continues to be quite insignificant, I hope that the special expence which they may occasion is also very trifling, while if any circumstances should revive the demand, the Land Fund, especially with the power which you will now possess to vary the Terms, and appropriate larger sums to management, (if more management is required) will meet the exigencies of the case. 11. Section 10 of the Act is intended to meet a difficulty which is thought to have arisen, and to which I referred in the concluding paragraph of my despatch No. 47, of May 31 last; as to the decision on conflicting claims on the New Zealand Company's Laud Orders, through the Company's notice of surrender: and its provision, which is of a strictly legal character, will be easily apprehended by your law advisers. 12. By the printed correspondence which accompanies this despatch, you will learn that the Act as now passed contains only part of the provisions originally intended. Those which have been omitted formed a plan for changing the present liability of the Land Fund for 208,370/., to the New Zealand Company into a liability to the extent of 200,000/ only, but charged in the form of debentures both on the general and land revenue of the colony, with powers to holders of those debentures to com-

mute them for remission orders available at sales of the demesne lands. 13. This was an arrangement which I considered could only be properly adopted with the general concurrence of all parties whose interest it would have affected, so far as this could be ascertained without the great delay of communicating' with yourself. When, therefore, it became apparent that it would meet, with the opposition of some of these parties, L had no doubt that it ought at once to be abandoned. 14. I am still however of opinion that the arrangement is one which it would be for the interests of the colony to effect. The continue ance of the claims of the New Zealand Com-' pany upon the whole proceeds of the land revenue* except that proportion of them which may be expended on emigration and surveys, will create so much difficulty in the management of the Crown lands and in the extinction of native titles, and will thus prove so serious an obstacle to the progress of the colony, that I think it would be well got rid of by the exchange of this claim for debentures on the terms proposed. 15. For although the annual charge on the resources of the colony for the interest on the 200,000/. would, no doubt, be a serious incumbrance, it is to be remarked on the other hand that the whole capital of the Company has been sunk in forming these settlements; in addition to which, large sums advanced to it by Parliament have been applied to the same object, as well as annual grants to a large amount, which have afforded means for carrying on the important public works which have contributed so much to the prosperity and peace of the colony, without interfering with other objects. 16. Considering the extent of the advantages thus conferred upon the settlers, it does not seem that the annual charge which it was then proposed by way of commutation to transfer to to the general revenue, would have been one for which the settlers would have had to complain that they had not received an ample return. Nor would the debt, in the form in which it was thus propo-ed to establish it, have proved any more serious obstacle to the progress of . z~ New Zealand than a debt incurred under somewhat similar circumstances, and which has already been in a great measure liquidated, did to that of South Australia. 17. The subject must, however, now be left, for the consideration of the Local Legislatures, with which I have no doubt that Parliament will he ready to co-operate for such a purpose. I have transmitted the Act with a copy of this despatch direct to Lieutenant-Governor Eyre: but have informed him that he is to take no step in order to carry it into execution without previous consultation with yourself, or authority from you. I have, &c, (Signed) Grey. Governor Sir George Grey, K. C. B. &c, &c. &c.

\_From the Wellington Independent.'] " Amongst other questions upon which it is extremely desirable and important that the colonists should lose no time in expressing their opinion, is that of the minumum upset price at which land should be sold in this colony; for we learn by the recent arrivals from England, that this subject will be brought under discussion during the next Session of parliament. " The "Midlothian " will sail some time next month, and will in all probability reach England before any bill can have passed through more than its first stage. " When Mr. E. G. Wakefield was examined in 1841, before the Committee on the Waste Lands he was repeatedly asked to state, what in his opinion should be the minimum upset price, but he invariably evaded the inquiry ; it mattered not that the Honourable Members exercised all their ingenuity in putting the question directly and indirectly, in all sorts of forms and shapes, the great advocate of the "high-price" could not be brought to book ; while deprecating and condemning the system previously pursued in the management of the Waste Lands in the various colonies, and denouncing the price at which they had been sold, as much too low, he resolutely refused to commit himself to any definite sum ; the only opinion that the Committee could wring from him was, that the upset price should be fixed and uniform ; and that it should be what he termed " a sufficient price," but what the " sufficient price" should be, he declined to state. The result of the Committee's investigations, was the passing in 1842-sof the

" Act for Regulating Land Sales in the Australian Colonies," by which it was enacted that the Waste Lands of the Crown shall never be sold at less than 20s. an acre. The Committee, unable to obtain either from Mr. Wakefield or from any other of the witnesses, what they i really meant by a sufficient price, apparently fixed upon 20s. as in their opinion the nearest approximation to it. Now one would fancy that after this "sufficient price" system has been tried in various colonies by the inventor himself during a period of ten years, or rather ftyer since the establishment of South Australia in 1838, there could be no difficulty in explaining the meaning of the term, and in mentioning the exact sum—but in reality the difficulty still seems as far from being solved as ever. The "sufficient price" has been changed both in different colonies, and also in one and the same colony, experiment after experiment has been tried, but the " sufficient price has not been determined ; but the most curious fact in connexion with this subject is, that in every instance, whatever degree of success has attended any scheme of colonization based upon Mr. Wakefield's high price principle, has been obtained, not by adhering to, but by violating, and setting the principle at nought. Thus in South Australia, where the system was first tried, the land was sold at 12s. and 20s. an acre, and the rapid progress of the colony has always been adduced by the supporters of the Wakefield theory, as a proof of its soundness ; but the price charged lor the land was only nominal; for the South Australian Commissioners, in order to induce parties to pay the 12s. and 20s. an acre, were obliged to hold out the baits —of town lands in Adelaide—of special Surveys —and of the privilege of forming secondary towns. The original price of the town sections was twelve shillings an acre, but in the course of a year or two building lots in good situations were worth from 1000/. to 2000/. per acre. But hear what the Commissioners themselves said in one of their annual reports on "i "this point. " Some persons, (say they) have contended that in the arrangements for establishing the colony of South Australia, provision should have been made for appropriating to the public service some considerable portion of the high value which the town land in the capital of the province might have been expected to acquire. We feel confident that had such a plan been adopted, the colony would not have been established. We were enabled to fulfil the conditions of the A^t of Parliament, and to raise 35,000/., by the sale of land in an unexplored wilderness, because the sanguine supporters of the principles of the colony felt and propagated the conviction, that in the event of success, the holders of preliminary toivn allotments would realize extraordinary gains. It was the expectation of these extraordinary gains, which induced the capitalist to incur the extraordinary risk which a preliminary purchase appeared to involve ; and it is the actual realization of these high gains, and the confidence which uniformly accompanies a rising market, which causes the influx of capital into Adelaide, by which prices are sustained. In the establishment of a new colony, the one thing needful is to offer high bounties upon the introduction of capital; and if similar causes may be expected to produce similar effects, the regulation, allowing individuals to benefit by the high value which land may acquire in secondary towns, may continue for an indefinite period to attract the tide of capital to South Australia." The Commissioners (who were all disciples of Mr. AVakefield) here admitted that had it not been for the bounty of the town acre in Adelaide, *.. they could not have sold country land at 12s. I or 20s. an acre, and also expressed their conviction, that it was only by holding out similar inducements, that future sales could be reasonably expected. The town acre was in fact worth, in probably the majority of cases, more than the sum paid for the accompanying 80 acre country \ section ; to say therefore that land was sold in \ South Australia at 12s. or 20s. an acre, is just as ' gross a mis-statement, as it is to assert that the settlers at Wellington paid 1/. an acre for all their country lands. The value of the town lands in Wellington, it is well known, is quite equal to the whole amount originally paid for both town and country lands, and had it not been for the bait of these town acres, the New Zealand Company could not have sold any part of their first 100,000 acres. The settlement of Wellington, as in the case of South Australia, though professedly based upon, could only be established by a violation of the Wakefield

principle. And as soon as ever the company had no more town acres to tempt buyers with, their sale of country lands ceased. Parties at once declined to buy at 20s. an acre, unless a bounty in the shape of town acres, equal to nearly the whole sum demanded for the country section, was thrown into the bargain. But in South Australia, the fixed price of 20s. an acre was still further evaded by the adoption of the system of special surveys. By this arrangement purchasers to the extent of 4000 acres and upwards were allowed to select their lands beyond the ordinary surveys in any district of the Province they might choose, and were entitled to take the land at such a figure as virtually to give them the fee simple of probably twenty or fifty times the quantity of land they purchased. Thus, it was no uncommon thing, we understand, for a purchaser of 4000 acres to take it in such a form as to command a frontage of 12 or more miles to the only river or stream in the district, thereby securing to himself for ever the undisturbed occupation of all the back country: —to maintain that the purchaser in such a case pays 1/. an acre, because he pays 4000/. for 4000 acres, while at the same time he obtains exclusive enjoyment of some hundred thousand acres, is an absurdity. The very colony, therefore, which has always been appealed to as affording evidence of the soundness of the Wakefield system, is really the one which of all others, even according to the reports of its own Commissioners, most completely exposes its fallacy, and demonstrates its utter impracticability. New Zealand bears ample testimony to the same purport; without going into details, or giving the history of the various settlements, we may safely venture to declare, that in each, the amount of land sold at 205., or under the Wakefield system, has been exactly in proportion to the amount of the bonusses, or (as the Australian Commissioners term them) the *'bounties" held out in the shape of town acres —that the more grossly the Wakefield principle has been violated and set at nought, the greater has been the success of the settlement —in short, that the lower the price of land has been reduced in any settlement, the greater has been the amount of land sold within it, and the more rapid and certain the progress and prosperity of the settlement itself.

But if the colonies founded professedly on the high price principle, have progressed and flourished owing to the violation of that principle, the progress of the colony of New South Wales on the the other hand, has been seriously retarded by the substitution of the high, for the low price system. We gave in a previous number the returns of the land sales in New South Wales from 1836 to 1846, from which, it was evident that the effect of raising the price of land from ss. to 20s. per acre, had been to reduce the sales to almost nothing—to annihilate the emigration fund—and virtually to hand over the fee simple of all the wastelands to the squatters. The Lyttelton Times, we remember, objected to the conclusions deduced from those returns, on the ground that as the quantity of land sold had fallen from about 180,000 acres in 1840 to about 21,000 in 1842, before the upset price of l/. an acre had been established by Parliament, there must have been some other cause in operation besides the increase in the price, but the true explanation of this apparent contradiction is, that 1542-3 were years of universal insolvency, and commercial distress. We have now before us complete returns of all the land, town and country, sold in New South Wales, during a period extending from 1836 to 1846, and we find, Ist, that the average demand of the three years 1837-8 and 9, was 322,330 acres, at a price scarcely exceeding o>. an acre, (about ss. 2d. ;) 2nd, that in 1840, the average price was nearly double, (9s. 9.Yd. an acre,)" and that the demand fell to 182,651 acres, or not much more than half; (had the price averaged double the price of the three previous years, or !os. 4d., the demand would probably' have been about half, or 161,1.00 acres ;) and 3rdly, that in 1841, the price was nearly double that of 1840, and the demand less than half, being only 85,039 acres. The results of increasing the price of laud have been precisely similar in this colony—the higher the price, the less the quantity sold. Jt. appears to us that the Wakefield school means by a "sufficient price," a price that the land won't fetch. The colonists contend that the "sufficient price" should be the market price. Now the market price of land in New Zealand has for a long time been, and will continue to be for many years to come, something between

ss. and 10s. an acre. To fix a higher price, is virtually to say, that no land shall be sold. Even Earl Grey, one of the staunchest advocates of the high price, has apparently been forced to the conclusion, for in the New Zealand Settlements Act, he proposed that the Governor should have power to dispose of land at any price he chose, and when his proposal was rejected, his Lordship expressed his fear that the restriction to the 1/. an acre would prevent any further sale of land. With this admission on the part of the Colonial Minister, the colonists, provided they express a decided opinion on the subject, will we apprehend find little difficulty in obtaining for their future Representative Legislature, power to lower the minimum upset price of land ; but we would urge them not to lose the opportunity afforded by the Midlothian of pressing the matter upon the attention of Parliament.