LAND PETITION.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 280, 18 July 1874, Page 3

LAND PETITION.

The following petition, praying for the opening of land for settlement in the immediate neighborhood of Naseby, was circulated on Saturday last. About 120 signatures were obtained, and the document forwarded by Monday's mail to Dunedin, in the hope that ib would reach Mr. Beid before he left for Wellington. In this, however, the petitioners were disappointed, as Messrs. Macandrew and Ueid went North on the Saturday : —" The' Provincial Secretary, Dunedin.

The memorial of the undersigned residents in and surrounding the town of Naseby HtTMBLY SHEWETH.:

Your memorialists have repeatedly petitioned that land should be thrown open in the vicinity of their homes for settlement.

. During the last session of the Provincial Council their claims were favorably considered—the Committee to whom their petitions were referred recommending that their prayer should be granted. Owing, however, we suppose, to an official communication from the Chief Surveyor—a communication, the facts of which are -wholly, though no doubt unintentionally, incorrect—up to this moment no action has been taken to carry out the Committee's recommendation .

Your petitioners emphatically deny that they participate in the slightest degree in any agricultural or grazing rights or privileges owing to the formation of the Mount Ida Pastoral Company. - Although Naseby has,been a prosperous and well-populated township for over eleven years, yet, during the whole of that time, not a single acre of land has been offered to those willing to settle within fifteen or twenty miles.

Ground eminently suitable, for settlement is situated within a convenient distance from Naseby, at an altitude of about 1,100 feet only, on the main line of road to the Dunstan.

Your petitioners believe that, if a block of land in the locality they indicate was thrown open under the agricultural lease system, the one-half would be taken up in six- months' time.

Your petitioners therefore pray that your Government, having taken the premises into their consideration, will, at an early date, so that the spring season may not he lost, cause a block of 5,000 acres to be proclaimed open for selection oh fhe Eweburn Run. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.