THE Mount Ida Chronicle THURSDAY APRIL, 19 1877.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 419, 19 April 1877, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle THURSDAY APRIL, 19 1877.

In the adverse criticisms so freely bestowed upon tbe Chief Surveyor for Lis dogmatic refusal to assist the Board in cutting up the "Waikouaiti runs—criticisms these from which it is very difficult to withhold a very cordial sympathy—there is contained a very mischievous element. Mr. Arthur's opinion is denounced as being not collateral with public opinion. It does strike us that neither the Board nor the people have anything to do with his opinion on this point. It is clearly as wrong for the Board to ask it as it is unprofessional for him to give it. The Board should trust themselves, not their surveyors, as to judgment where unfortunately, the law makes an artificial classification imperative. If the members have not the requisite knowledge, they have no business to be appointed. If they have, they have no right to shift the responsibility upon their Surveyor. At any rate the Surveyor should have no voice. He is not a member of the Board, and is not chosen by the Government for his practical knowledge of husbandry. He has scientific talent which fits him for | the office of little king over tbe Otago Surveyors, but does not at all qualify him to rule over the people. An officer with the right stuff in him would have refused to lend' himself to such an act of folly, much less initiate it. As the mistake has been made, we are quite of the opinion of the Dunedin ' Star' that the Surveyor-General should remove Mr. Arthur, in his own interest equally as in that of the Colony, to Nelson or Marlborough, where his really valuable scientific attainments might be better appreciated, and where he could slide down crags and precip : ces to bis heart's content.

Me. Horace Bastings and Mr. James Green Lave deserved the very general praise they have received for their successful victory at the Waste Lands Board on behalf of humanity versus sheep and wire fences. This battle, which is only as yet partially won, should not be confounded with the continual struggle to be fought under our present system of settling the people when land is required on runs the leases of which have more than twelve months to run, or which may have again been re-leased on the same conditions as at present, subject to the law. It is noticeable that this confusion is almost universal. One friend to settlement congratulating another upon the Waikouaiti victory almost always crows out his satisfaction—" Well, they " cannot well help doing the same with " the runs in my quarter, of much bet- " ter quality than those at Waikouai- " ti." On the strength of this easy going creed (to bear fruit, so far as Strathtaieri, Maniototo and Ida Valley are concerned, about 1882) the two men fold their arms, thank God they are not as narrow as other men, in especial as those wretched squatters, and do nothing. In the inaction consequent upon small victories by the people lies the stagnation of the public prosperity and the squatter's best chance of ultimate renewal of lease on his own terms. If the runs in these plains are still under lease about 1881 the battle as to whether they shall be re-leased or not will have the a to be fought, as was don~ last week, at the Board table, provided the law is not changed. That battle, which we hope will never occur at all, has nothing to do with the struggle under the existing law for the people's inheritance, being fought now under the law in this district, and which has been concluded victoriously in Tapanui, Tuapeka, and the South long ago. There are a few notably vicious foundation doctrines which have crept unchallenged into Waste Land Board administration, and appear clearly in the last week's contest. We have referred to one of these above. Another is the matter-of-course placement of the people's advocates on their trial. They are browbeaten, treated as if desirous to commit fraud, and, if acquitted, the judgment is accompanied with a very strong caution not to do it again. What an extraordinary spectacle is this progressive settlement of the great interior lands of Otago by popular clamor when it is remembered that, for the most part, there is no populace to clamor. The Board, the guardian of the lands I for settlement, knows nothing of the | lands, and elects to know nothing, unless besieged by memorials and petitioners. When so besieged they refer the memorial to an officer, and, if that officer is not given to change his opinions, such as they are, as to the capabilities of land for profitable farming to suit every alteration in the public value of land, the result must be intense disappointment to those requiring land. A class of people can be found in most districts where settlement of the soil is possible who are prepared to agitate, to bend the knee to the Board, and be told they are liars and forgers of names and utter maniacs, and yet not turn sick of the thankless task. These, already having a house roof over their families' heads, are prepared to settle on their own land as their hold on min-

ing or shepherding slackens, and will go great lengths in self-abnegation to attain their end. But there is another class, a clase which is very much needed to settle successfully a newly-opened district with advantage,—the men who havs some capital, and are prepared to buy 600 or 800 acres, to make a homestead eufScieutly valuable as to be a foundation, enabling them to offer high rates for 3000 or 5000 acres of pastoral hill country, such as the Kock and Pillar, Bough Kidge, and Biackstone Hill, in 1882. "Will this class agitate, remain in the district for years on spec of something wise turning up at the Dunedin Board? Nothing of the kind. Such men ask—Where is land open ? Shew us the maps ! If not at once satisfied they leave the country. The miserable system of settlement by agitation is a most vicious one, and calculated to promote what, by itself, in isolated districts is by no means the best class of settlement. Capital is driven away, and the settlers who have little or no money are deprived of the opportunity they should have to tide over their first few years' difficulty by working half time for others. This hateful system is a direct evasion of responsibility by the [ Board, whose members are constituted j the people's guardians, as well as the I guardians of the public estate. It is a systca of masterly inactivity devised to prevent the disastrous results which would accrue to the Colony were 20,000 acres, or more, to be open for selection, to suit any intending settler who may have made money in the Colony, or may have been attracted to it by its fair name, as being a habitable land, and a profitable field for investment. We are convinced that, to open 50,000 acres round Naseby, paying £6OOO compensation to the pastoral tenants, without being first assured that the land would be taken up in a fortnight, would ruin the public credit of New Zealand. Yet as much public money, collected in great part from the Southern taxpayer, would be spent on a bridge in the North Island in any place where a few merchants held timber leases, and employed a score of people. And would it be believed the land revenue of Naseby district itself, not including land sold, for there is next to none open for sale, is nearly £IO,OOO a year ? Let us consider for a moment what a mad fellow one would be to attempt to agitate for 50,000 acres of Hundreds below Naseby, say from Kyeburn Eiver to Eweburn, and from Taieri to the fence line above the Eweburn bloeks, through Sanders' gate and MThee's to Eweburn. Such a maniac should be crushed at once. The Colony would suffer. The settlers' babies, if they had any—which would be doubtful, human diet being speargrass, matagoura, and tussocks—would perish of Bandy blight and blood poison, or want of blood altogether. There are no precipices it is true, but the wind would blow down every building that these emaciated pauper settlers could put up. The rabbits would, even be driven off to the runs which were not included in the Hundred, and their holders also would be ruined, and all those who were instrumental in bringing about such an injury upon a large portion of the human race without doubt would never die in their beds. A manaical notion clearly. Let us wait patiently until 1882, and the other ten years extension of leases grateful Canterbury will buy for Otago's tenants (1892), and so on.. The squatters , are not after all a bad sort. There is no reason why, in spite of the law, they should not be allowed to mismanage the public estate, and rush into the hands of the mortgagees. Peach, Damson & Co., are also good fellows in their way. But then they are low rascals, given to rnr.rry imprudently, and to imagine they have fewer cattle than they really have. They have even b' n accused of watering the milk, be- '■ • use the kye had gone to pound, and ifter all have no divine right to live and fatten upon the natural grasses, like our pastoral Nebuchadnezzars. Cleariy they should recognise this, and wait patiently until 1882, 1892, 1902, &c, &c. We commend this to them for consideration. Our enthusiastic Waikouaiti correspondent blames the Land Law for the locking up of the lands. In so far as the Abolition legislation gives the irresponsible Waste Lands power to put the lock upon the Land Act by doing nothing, the general law is unwise. It is not the Land Law that is in fault, but Messrs. Pyke and confreres, who supported the doing away | with the Provincial Assembly, that was ! responsible to the people, the body | that had the power to obey the people's behest, which now our Otago heroes have helped to place unchecked in the Waste Land Board. The apostle of the Clyde Land League! Where is the Land League now, that was to shake so much, and has shaken so little was one of the main instruments in putting the shackles on the liberal Land Law we now have.

The Board has, however, power to enforce the Act if Its members choose. Strange as it may seem, it would be quite legal/to please that maniac, and open -50.000 acres of land below Nasebv, 30,000 in Strathtaieri, and 50,000 in Ida Valley, so that anyone who chose could settle—could even come from Australia and found a New Zealand home. More than legal: the Act of 1872 is so liberal on that point that, to evade its liberality by inaction, is morally criminal. It is an offence against men, against the spirit and letter of the law, and against the rapid prosperity of a large portion of this young Colony. As the vicious principle of settlement by agitation is the only one acceptable to the Waste Lands Board, and as they have hitherto done nothing without it,, and very little with it j as, too, we have some thou

sand men and women in Maniototo, as yet unstarved, even criminal enough to possess cattle, we intend to throw in with that maniac, if by any means our fine plains may find favor in the eyes of these wise men of Dunedin. We wiU not do our worst, as we have been dared to do, but our best to persuade the Board for one to cast aside prudential folly, and cheat itself into doing a wise thing. The country is here in abundance producing this year., where tried in three or four places many miles apart, spring grown wheat, 50 bushels to the acre. The people out of employment arc thronging the coast from North to South, beseeching genial ship cnptains in our ports to take them Home free. Capital id seeking investment in land. The only obstacle to a remedy is the combined conservative force of the squatter and the Chief Surveyor. The law gives the squatter free selection of 1280 acres in his run, as a guard against its liberal provisions for the people. He has exercised that right, and in so doing has recognised his liability to lose his run at any time for compensation. " Let him ba compensated. Let all public money in unalienated districts be devoted to this one purpose of land redemption. When that is done, when the people are settled on their own lands, be it five acrea, fifty, two hundred, or five hundred, with main communications open, they can build their own district bridges and make own district roads, In the we object to the taxation upon the people being devoted to roads and bridges to double the value to the present holhers of the pastoral leaseholds —if the nominee Waste Lands Board of the future has its way—very soon to become pastoral freeholds.