The New-Zealander. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1847.

New Zealander, Volume 2, Issue 91, 27 February 1847, Page 2

The New-Zealander. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1 847.

lie just afld fear Hot : Let all the ends thou aims't at, be thy Country's, Thy Gou's, and Truth's.

THE £1 PER ACRE SYSTEM.

In is/ we believe, already known to our readers, that the Act under which the waste lands of the Crown in this Colony have been hitherto disposed of, will soon cease to apply to New Zealand, while it has been amended with respect to other Australian Colonies', by an act passed in the last session of Parliament, empowering Her Majesty to demise lands in these Colonies, and to grant licenses for the occupation of them, for periods not exceeding fourteen years. The principal provisions of the Imperial Land Sales Act, as it was generally, though not very correctly, called, were, that all waste lands of the Crown in the Australian Colonies should be disposed of only by sale at public auction, and at a minimum upset price of £l per acre. This system of disposing of the waste lands of the Crown has, for some years, been under trial in the Australian Colonies, and, by the confession of all persons who have had opportunities of observing its operation, has everywhere proved to foe a decided failure, whether viewed as an expedient for raising a revenue, or for promoting colonization, or with respect to both these objects together. In New South Wales, for instance, several methods of disposing of the waste lands of the crown have been successively tried, and that under the Imperial Land Sales Act has been very justly considered the worst of them all, the disproportion between the annual amounts of the proceeds of land sales under it, and under the preceding systems, being immense. The Imperial Land Sales Act has been objected to, principally, upon two grounds, the uniformity of the minimum upset price, and its magnitude. It has been argued, that there could be no greater absurdity than the establishment of one uniform upset price of all country lands, without regard to their quality, their, superficial or internal products, or, in fact, to any of the circumstances which give to' land a natural or artificial value. • This objection, however, is more specious than real. It applies with equal force to every upset price, whatever be its magnitude, provided only it be uniform. But, if the upset price were variable, the magnitude of it in each particular instance would be fixed at the discretion of the local government, a regulation which might, at least, lead to favoritism, jobbing, and other intolerable grievances. Upon the other hand, if the average value of country land of an inferior kind, but, at the same time, available for agricultural or pastoral purposes, could be ascertained with any tolerable exactness, it might, it would seem, without any great detriment to the government or the public, be made the minimum upset price. In this way, good land would, if sold at proper times, fetch its real value in the Colony by the competition of the settlers, while bad land could not be sold at all, until the general improvement of the Colony, or of particular districts in which it might be situated, would give it an artificial value Even Under this system, however cleverly managed, it would be easy to point out inconveniences which would, from time to time, necessarily arise ; but, we altogether incline to the belief, that those which would arise out of the discretionary system would be, not only more numerous, but of a veiy much worse character. The great error of the Imperial Land Sales Act, then, it would appear, consisted, not in the uniformity of the upset price, but in its

magnitude. The idea of a high upset price of land in colonies, was, before the passing of -the Imperial Land Sales Act, strenuously re* commended by Mr. E. G. Wakefield, who made it ihe basis of what he calls his selfsupporting system of colonization, and there can be no doubt that it was introduced from his writings into the act in question. The entire want, of the great scarcity of labour, were the grand evils complained of in all Her Majesty's colonies before the passing of the act. thousands upon thousands of labourers and artizans in great Britain and Ireland were anxious to go to the colonies, but unable to meet the expenses attendant upon, and connected with the conveyance thither of themselves and their families. No imperial or colonial fund was in existence for the payment of these expenses. The inclination, too, of intending emigrants to go to the Australian colonies was, on account of their greater distance, less, while the expense was, forthe same reason, greater. It was under these circumstances, and in this state of things, that the Imperial Land Sales Act was passed, and 1 the upset price of £l per acre adopted. A con- , siderable part of the proceeds of the sales was to be appropriated to the purposes of emigration, and, it was supposed, that in this way a large portion of the purchase money would be returned, in a very beneficial way, to the settlers, and that the upset price would only seem to be high, while it was in reality very low. But the absolute trial of the system for several years, in several different colonies, has proved all these speculations to be mere delusions. Nor would it have been at all difficult for any person acquainted with colonial matters to anticipate the failure of them. There is one latent error in the system, which is by itself nearly sufficient to explain its failure. It is plainly supposed in it that colonial lands are •wholly or principally used for agricultural purposes, and that therefore they must be useless without an abundant supply of mercenary labour. The fact is, however, that a very small portion only of the lands purchased at Crown sales in colonies is used for agricultural purposes, and that, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned. Let us suppose, then, that a settler purchases 1000 acres of land for a cattle-run at £l per acre, the real value of the land being five shillings per acre. Will such a man be compensated for his enormous outlay in the purchase of the land, by the facility, however great, of getting two or three men- to tend his herds ? Again, the constant tendency of things in every colony is to convert artizans and labourers into small capitalists after a few years passed in tolerable, industry and sobriety, and the experience of all colonies proves, that the withdrawal of mercenary labour from the market in this way is generally greater in amount, than the introduction of it from the mother country. Here then is a demonstration, that there never can be in a growing colony, such an amount of mere mercenary labour, as would justify a prudent man in paying for land much more than its real value, even though he intended to use it for purposes purely agricultural. Many other considerations, too, tend, and some of them forcibly, to expose the hollowness of the £1 per acre system, but those upon which we have been insisting will answer our present purpose sufficiently. Over and above the difficulties upon which we have been observing, the application of this system to this district was beset by others, local in their nature, and peculiar in their character. In this colony,' the settlers saw the government one day purchasing land from the Natives at three-pence per acre, and selling it a few days after at £l per acre to them. The Natives soon became convinced, that the demand for their land was almost wholly intercepted by the Government, and that they were compelled to sell the small portion desired by the Government for about the twentieth part of the sum of money which the settlers would give them for it. The Natives, having of course only loose notions of the obligations of a solemn treaty, and generally being wholly ignorant of the existence of the said treaty, were extremely dissatisfied, and thought themselves grossly injured. The views of the settlers were pressed upon the Government through the medium of the natives, who were used as a cat's pa «r for that purpose. It has been said that some ill-advised persons stimulated 'the Natives to teaze Capt. Fitzßoy for permission to sell their lands to the settlers, who, having no military force at his command, felt himself compelled to yield to their importunity. The Crown's right of pre-emption was waived for the payment of a fee of one penny per acre upon all land purchased from the Natives by the settlers. At the same time, the market was flooded with land granted by the Crown in exchange for lands claimed by the old land claimants. Between the two events, the Imperial Land Sales Act became a perfect nullity, the Natives and the settlers were satisfied, and the bitter feelings which existed previously between the Government on the one hand, and the Natives and settlers on the other, took a new direction, and soon presented thenuelves in a silent though aggravated form between the two dirisions of the settlers, the old and new land claimants. As to the new system under which the waste lands of the Crown, or lands the property of the Natives, will be sold or demised in this Colony, no definite opinions can yet be formed.