THE LAND QUESTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 22 November 1906, Page 3

THE LAND QUESTION.

SPEECH BY THE HON. MR

McNAB

Speaking of the future of the colony at a banquet tendered to him at Blenheim last Tuesday, the Minister of Lands said that this colony was not going to be a country for one big man, but for small men. It was better to have close settlement on land than one man to have a model farm with highly bred stock. There was no comparison between the breeding of fine cattle and sheep on enormous areas of country and the demands of humanity ! The policy of the Government was to put men and not beasts in the occupation of the fields, and it was a policy that would have to be followed in the future no matter what Administration came into power. They had only to go to other countries and see what great thinkers had said of such a policy. Although these thinkers might be theorists they generally indicated the ideas of practical men. If the Government went down he thought he and. his colleagues would live to see the policy he had outlined become an accomplished fact. He did not want any one to go away with the idea that the members of the new Ministry were wild socialists. Nothing of the kind. Whether his hearers agreed with the policy or not he thought they would give the Ministry credit tor not having ati} r desire to ruin the country as alleged by opponents. He was born in the colony and there was no position within the Empire that would take him away. That was the feeling’ permeating the whole of the Ministry, and if the country was to “go to the dogs ’’ as a result of the Government’s policy (which he did not for a moment believe) then the members of the Ministry, mostly New Zealanders, would go .to the dogs'with it ! (Cheers).