The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1907. MORE LAND BILL.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3765, 16 May 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, MAY 16, 1907. MORE LAND BILL.

The Hon. J. A. Mieear is perhaps the least specious of all New Zealand Ministers of the Crown, but the Land Bill microbe has at last attacked him. He is on the stump in an endeavour to show how very fair the Government will be when it passes the Land Bill. One ot the things Mr Millar said at Auckland the other day was that the Government did not intend purchasing a single acre of freehold with the exception of that owned by the man who had worth. Speaking on the leaseholders’ desire to get the option of acquiring the freehold, Mr Millar asked if the leaseholder were to be the only man who had the right to acquire the freehold ? Mr Millar pointed out that the Government had already sold seventyseven million pounds worth ot freehold ! It is evident to a man with an eye and a-half blind that there would be several freeholders besides the ex-leaseholders who ask for the freehold of their land. The point is, of course, that if the leaseholder has no right to acquire the freehold, that the owners ofthe seventy - seven million pounds worth of existing freehold are wrongfully holding it. That is to say, if it is fair to permit all those owners to still own it, it is fair to permit the Crown leaseholder the lease in perpetuity, and every other land tenant. Mr Millar lays particular stress on the big owner who will have to disgorge all land over a capital value of ,£50,000 in the sweet bye and bye. The big holder has ten years to do it in, and he will have to sell the freehold of his surplus to the small buyer. What right has the small buyer to the freehold in ten years time ? If he has a right, why has not the lease in perpetuity man also a right ? It is absurd of Mr Millar to ask the question whether the present Crown tenants should be the only people entitled to the freehold of their land. They most emphatically should have the prior offer. The selling of a Crown tenant’s land by auction as suggested as an alternative by the Minister, would be about as cruel a system as could be devised by, the most soulless boodler in exis-

tence, and as a matter of fact the soulless boodler will Le the most likely to acquire it, plus improvements. As we have before pointed out, the Government has the power at present without waiting for ten years, to acquire large estates. The Government does not propose to acquire the estates of men having over £50,000 worth now, and at present values. If it did so, it could lease the land and not sell it, and its policy could be understood. But it proposes to allow the big landholders to hang on while the land gets ten years added value to it, and then to relinquish it, not to the Government for lease to Crown tenants, but to the people direct, which is the most extraordinary and pandering to the fat man and a blank denial of the Government’s intention to lease and not sell laud. Here is a suppositious case that might happen under the provisions of the Land Bill: One Crown tenant Las improved his land, made a home and a success of his operations. “If the land is to be sold,” sa3'S Mr J. A. Miller, ‘‘it should be sold by auction.” The Crown tenant, therefore, may get notice to quit, and a stranger steps into his shoes. At the same time a man who has never been on the land before finds that a £50,000 landowner is bound to sell under the limitation clause. He may buy the freehold, and be in all respects a free man under no obligation of any sort to the Government. ‘‘ If there had been no Government leasehold not one-third of the present settlers would have been on the land.” Why not? No sane Government can afford to block settlement. Unquestionably but for the botch potch of the laud legislation and administration of the past, New Zealand might have paid settlers to take the fee simple of the land, relying on the stream of immigration and the increase of produce and commerce in all departments for a revenue. The retarding of settlement lies in the fact that New Zealand has never seen that the Canadian plan is the proper plan. The greed of the Government has been so eager after revenue which they have misspent, and by their own act have boomed land to the present shameful value. Land is worth what it will grow, and stiff prices have kept millions of acres of land in New Zealand from growing anything. It would have paid the Governments of the past to grant free lands with a limit of area. Instead the Governments let whomsoever would acquire lands in the early days, and the present Government is buying it back at absurd values, hoping to tack still more absurd values on it in order to raise revenue. But while it is not to raise revenue hy every hook and crook of the taxation game, it always borrows money on the land development scheme it says it has in view. New Zealand, although a marvellous producing country, considering the comparatively small portion of it under cultivation, could be made to produce ten thousand times more if the land laws were only liberal. The liberality is to the professional speculator, the habitual balloteer, and the fat person with an excess over ,£50,000 worth. The Government gives this last person ten years to think it over. Supposing the Laud Bill passes (and it is a very vague supposition), who is to tell what the new Government that will take office in 1908 or_ 1909 will do ? All Governments in the past have tinkered with the land laws, and the 1908 Government will also tinker with it. Everybody has his idea about land tenure, and the idea of the man on the land is the only idea that matters. He says, if he tells the truth, that he wants the freehold, and wants it cheaply. He has said it since the time of Moses. He will say it until the last trump. The Government simply does not tell the truth when it says its Bill is in the interest of the greatest number. The Land Bill is purely and simply a bid for notoriety on the part of George Fowles and Robert McNab, both of whom will be very sorry indeed to be called upon to cut down their real and personal estates to a humble ,£50,000.