The Cheviot Estate.

Manawatu Herald, 4 May 1893, Page 2

The Cheviot Estate.

« We take from the Dunedin Star a portion of the report of Mr Scobie Mackenzie's speech at Naseby on Friday week : — I am myself glad to see any big estate out of the road by any honest means, for I do not like big estates. I But let me clear away a misapply hension. There is a curious notion abroad that the Government somehow put the screw on the owners of Cheviot— that they wrested the

estate from them, as it were. It s quite the. other way on. It was tlie owners who piii , tlie , scre^v .oil . ,tiie do iirifc hesitate to say that the minutest enquiry should be made by Parliament into all the . circumstances . cqnnebteq tyth Mie,p'urbh 1 43e'. There' ale" i.#B clauses in the Act, one of which enables the Government to protect themselves against a low valuation by calling on the owner to sell at that valuation plus 10 per cent ; the othei* efiable"s the. OWrier to Wdtetri himself RgaiHst ft high taluatioii Bjf calling dh the Government tb hu'y. The clauses are taken 1 bodily from 1 the did tirb'perty tax. During all tHeie yearS &hy owner fcotiifl Tittv^ called on the Government to buy h\i laridatHisown.flgdre— Uild lie bh.ly" thought ih9 Goveriimen'ts- of th« past were Liberal enough (I hope the reporter will put this word with a big "L.'.'.).tb buy; Well; the trustees of Cheviot estate tailed oil tlie Sdvera'ttieni id tJiiy M Strkiyii* way they bought. But the price is a staggerer for a property that is four-fifths pastoral, and, in my opinion, it quite excludes the notion of small and profitable settlement. I say . agaitt that, strict inquiry should be iiiade id brßer tb 3eß whether the Government iLHtefl Meier 1 cdillpeteilfc aßvifce in plirchiisibfe th@ estate . And if that enquiry is held and the trustees can be examined under oath, I will give you leave to call me a fool if three things are not established. First, that the trustees have been prepared to sell for a long time— practically since the death of the owner ; secondly, that they had quite despaired of getting a private purchaser for the estate ; and thirdly, that from any purchaser they had long been prepared to take a great deal less, than the Gouernnient gave for the estate, — (A Voice : You will have to prove that in Parliament.") I don'fc want you to make any mistake about what lam saying. I do not think for an instant there was anything wrong or corrupt about the purchase. What Ido think is that the motive was by no means so much a desire for settlement (otherwise Cheviot would never have been chosen) as a desire to prepare the way for the elections by deluding simple people into the belief that the bursting up was really commencing.— (Applause.) And now let us understand where we are. I undertook to show you that the Government policy was a policy of imposture, of course you understand that I use the term all through in a political sense only — and that that character extended to its chief item, the so called bursting up.