The Manawatu Standard. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast FRIDAY, SEPT. 18, 1885. SPECIAL SETTLEMENTS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume X, Issue 1458, 18 September 1885, Page 2

Manawatu Standard. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast FRIDAY, SEPT. 18, 1885. SPECIAL SETTLEMENTS IN NEW ZEALAND.

Some correspondence has been laid before Parliament which has taken place between the Premier and the Agent-General with regard to the propounding of a scheme for disposing, m Great Britain, of land m this-colony for the purposes of special settlement. On the Bth „•©£■ June the Premier telegraphed as follows to the Agent-General : — " Can you dispose to suitable farmers with small capital some special settlements, under conditions gazetted, if I place such settlements entirely at your disposal, with guarantee descriptions, farmers to pay own passages and instalments for surveys? It might be desirable a few should come m advance, families to follow. Would conditions require modification m any important particular ? M The Agent-General m his reply pointed out that the features of compulsory residence and improvement conditions might prove adverse to the success of such a scheme. He further pointed out m a subsequent explanatory letter that m the face of the immense efforts . which arc made by the dominion of Canada to attract small farmers un». der liberal conditions, he long ago -arrived -at the conclusion that, under the restrictions m the Special Settlement Regulations, few farmers of the class we really want would be tempted to go out. This class, he pointed out, has been worried - and harried for many years past all 1 over England; Scotland, and Ireland by its conditions of tenure, by bad seasons, and by a collapse m prices; it is 'greatly disheartened, has lost money year by year, and is at last reduced to very great straits. People of this kind hug every shilling of what is left to them ; and, although they are perfectly aware of the great advantage New Zealand effers them m climate as compared to. Canada, they know they! can get the best of soil m Canada or the States, and the difference m I cost of passage is so serious to them that it carries the day. But, more than this, people who have been disheartened and dispirited by their tenancy of land they can never make their own, long above everything else for liberty. Something" is wanted to set against this difference of passage money; instead of this the difference is aggravated by restrictions to which they are not subjected elsewhere. Colonists who have been for some time m New Zealand, and have got accustomed to the severe restrictions of our land law, can and do make light of them ; but. it is quite a different thing when we come to deal ... with people m Great Britain, who are not onty very ill-informed, but naturally timid. They contrast our offer with what is offered to them by others, and again the difference m passage money turns the scale. Sir Dillon Bell then procoeds to show thesuperior attraction offered by Canada and Queen land, and remarks that, if these proposals are contrasted with burs, it will be evident that not much temptation exists for a small farmer to prefer New Zealand. He holds that if we want really to tempt farmers to go put m any numbers, assistance must be given to them toward the cost of their passage, and that of the class which above any other we want inthe Colony — namely, small farmers with moderate capital — there are thousands who might easily be brought to New Zealand if we would adopt toward them a policy which may be expressed m these words : « The Government will take you to New Zealand as cheaply as you can he taken to Manitoba^" He is con- ! vinced that each fortnightly steamer could be made to take out its complement of valuable settlers ; and, if it pays the Colony to bring out working-people, it would pay at least as well to devote part of the Immigration Fund to bringing out small farmers. He adds— '* As to cost, it would, m my opinion, soon repay itself a hundred time 3 over." Sir Dillon Bkll further contends that it ought to be quite immaterial to the Government whose Jand is occupied by a small farmer, so long as he does occupy it. While the Colony was depending so largely

upon the receipts of land revenue an immense area of land fit for settlement and cultivation was ac quired on speculation* the greater part of which is a wilderness and waste to this day. It would be infinitely better that this land should be occupied and cultivated than that people should ever be led to take up poor land, without means of communication, and at a distance from markets ; and since there has been direct steam communication he has never ceased to regret ..that farmers were not being invited to go iratrand occupy really good land, whosoever it might be, by means of the only inducement really effective for the purpose— viz., the reduction of the cost of their passage to them. As a Wellington paper remarks, and I we can endorse every word:— • " There is a great deal of sound { " practical wisdom m these views "set forth by the Agent-General, " and it is highly desirable that " prompt and vigorous action should '"be taken m the direction indicated. " Population is the paramount and " crying necessity of New Zealand, " and Parliament would be much " more usefully employed m con- " sidering how' this great desidera- " turn may be supplied than m "wrangling over rival claims to "office, or m debating club discus- *:* sions on the fads and whimsies of "mere doctrinaires."* What we really want is," People for the land.'* We have the land for the people. Any quantity of it. Thousands and tens of thousands of acres, that would support thousands and hundred of thousands of people. But they go elsewhere; for the simple reason that they are offered better inducements elsewhere. The great want m this grand . young country is population. Here we are, after nearly 50 years' 1 existence as a Colony, with only a little over half-a-million of a European populatior, and depressions constantly occurring. Were there the constant stream of immigration to New Zealand that there is to the United States and the Dominion of Canada, aiid which is now setting-in to South America, would this state of things be? There is very little reason to doubt, with the experience of the last few years . before us, that free immigration has been a huge mistake. We do riot require people who are unable to pay their own passages. With nominated immigration it is different. In that case the immigrants are for the most part coming out to their friends or relatives who have either prospered, or are m the way of prospering, m the land of their adoption. Better far to give the immigrants who do pay their passages the land for nothing, or at any rate at a very nominal price. ■We want consumers as well as producers. We want people to use our railways, for which we are under such a terrible burthen of debt, and have to pay suth a heavy annual rate of interest. We want people to take up our waste lands, and reclaim the forest and the wilderness. We have room for thousands upon thousands. We can offer better -inducements m the way of soil and climate -than any country under the sum Bu^we aeter immigration by placing too high a price upon our lands, and people go where land is cheaper if the , surrounding advantages are less substantial and assured. Our legislators; must awake some day to the knowledge that what is wanted to make New Zealand the great and flourishing country it ought to be— -the Britain of the South — is m a word, « 4 People for the land v