LIBERAL LAND POLICY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1089, 4 January 1912, Page 4

LIBERAL LAND POLICY.

A SETTLER'S OPINION

A gentleman who took up laud in the North Island in the early eighties and who is now resident in Canterbury, makes (remarks the Lyttelton Times) a rather belated protest against the thoughtless fashion in which many people cast their votes at the recent election. He is astonished that folk with any stake iu the country should have deliberately assisted in the attack upon the Liberal laud policy, which he regards as the key-note of all national progress. His view of the political situation can be best expressed in his own homely words: —“It would be a great calamity to have a crowd of ‘ Reformers ’ in power. The North Island people owe more to the Liberal Government than any other people do, as the bulk of them got their land on the easiest terms. I took up land at 20S an acre capital value, and paid 5 per cent, as rent. Now that class of land is selling up to £2O an acre. It was owing to the Liberal Government giving the dairying a start by appointing experts in the nineties that the settlers have done so well, and yet in my old district of Pahiatua the silly chumps elected an opponent of the very men that set them on their legs. When the Conservatives came into power for a short lime m 1887, this is what they did; They reduced thousands ot acres in the Pahiatua district from first-class to second-class land, and the wealthy squatters of Hawke’s Bay came along and mopped up the land all round. When we took up the land it was classed as first class, and we could get only 640 acres each, but when it was reduced to second-class these squatters could take up 2000 acres each at 15s an acre, with roads to the land, while we had no roads for years. This sort of thing will happen again it the Reformers ever get into power, and they wih reform the last chance for the small man out of existence. lam glad to see that you kept Canterbury, with the aid ot its own good sense, on the right track, but if Massey and his crowd have the running ot things lor a year or two, God help the country and its landless people !”