LANDED PROPERTY IN WELLINGTON.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 235, 4 October 1880, Page 4

LANDED PROPERTY IN WELLINGTON.

(N.Z. Times.) j The Supreme Court, during the wholle of Monday, when hearing the case of Webber v. Wright, was engaged in discussing the value — past, present, and future— of Wellington property. For; seven long hours a judge, four lawyers, and eight or ten " experts" — auctioneers, merchants, land agents and speculators, etc., — talked, thought, breathed, and looked "property." The air was redo;leht of property, and the word itself was uttered in all sorts of connexions thousands of times. Two legal gentle*men did their utmost to demonstrate that it would be better for fourteen! persons to receive £6000 among thenji when a man, now aged 54, dies, than it would be to have Groathurst farm to share at the same time, considering what might possibly happen to the town and colony in the meantime ; and two other legal gentlemen strove to prov^ the fourteen with "great expectations]' would have those expectations diminj-

iehed by thousands of pounds through the substitution, and hence the array, of "experts" to settle the point. But the point was not settled. Of course the experts differed, as all experts do, and while one thought G-oathurst if sold in sections two years ago would have brought £25,000, another put it at less than half, and between these extremes the others fluctuated, one successful land dealer remarking:, when aßked if it would fetch £20,000, that he would prefer having the £20,003 to the land. Of course, too, the late " land mania" was fought oyer again half a dozen times, and mouth-watering tales were told of how many were transformed from poor to rich by lucky speculations — which everybody concurred was all done upon "paper"-— and there were some long-drawn sighs when the past was compared with the present. Many and oft were the references to the piping times when sections on a hill one could hardly climb were* sold at fabulous rates, and when everybody, as the Judge said, was "looking for something to cut up," and when some of th.9 lookers were cut up themselvee. But while differing otherwise, all agreed that times two years ago were "good' 1 and now they were " bad"— some said "very bad;" "When asked as. to the future, the experts were tolerably unanimous but remarkably indefinite. They all agreed that -Wellington had a "great future" before it, bub could not date that future a tenth so accurately as Dr. Cumming could fix the Millennium, and when pressed to be specific the experts became as ambiguous as Te Whiti himself, and like his followers, began to v fence/ There was no getting them to commit themselves, not even when tHe. Chief. Justice, .suggested > the Terawhiti goldfield might tend to mend matters. All assented, though, that it would be some time before the numerous townships laid oufi in every direction were covered with a dense population ; and there was unanimity, too, that while there is plenty of money now, people will not, invest, things being in a state of uncertainty." A well-known auctioneer said land was now practically valueless — no one bought it; except a stray individual who actually wanted a section. '* When such ajm'an comes along," the witness added,' "and we see he talks business, we sell to him at a very reasonable r fi£ure. ? ' It was added, however, in a (despondent to.ne|, that visits from those who "talked business" were just now like visits from angels— few and far between. ' ""-