CROWN LAND WITHIN THE SETTLED DISTRICTS. From the Sydney Herald.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 239, 13 September 1848, Page 4

CROWN LAND WITHIN THE SETTLED DISTRICTS. From the Sydney Herald.

We rejoire to perceive that in several pnrts of the colony time is a disposition to agitate on this most vexacious of subjects. Public meetings ore being called here and theic " for the purpose of taking into consideration the recent regulations relating to the Crown Lands within the settled districts, and adopting suoh measures as may be dpemed advisable to prevent the same from being carried into effect," The regulations nre to take effect from the beginning of next year, the 40th section declaring that "the first Icates issued under these regulations will be for the year commencing on the Ist January, 1849." The movement has been by far too long delayed. The legulations were officially published so far back as the 29th March ; and in our leading article of the Ist Apiil.fwe e-rneslly called public attention to some of their most obnoxious features. Had the colonists bestined themselves with due promptitude, therefore, their remonstrances might hy this time have been more i than half way to England. For in England, without doubt, their battle must be fought. Neither the Local Govei ument, nor the Local LegislatureL c gislature is competent to grant the needful redress. The letter of the regulations, it is true, was framed by *' Hia Excellency the Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council ;" but this was done "in pursuarcc of Her Majesty's Order in Council, ot 9th March. 1847 ;" and the legulations are, moreover, declared in their preamble to be " subject to the approval of the right lion, the Sectetary of State for the Colonies." It is thus clear that our appeal must be made to Downing-stieet, and it ought to have been in time to have reached the minister before he had Minified his approval of the legulations. The utmost concessions that can be leasunably expected from the Colonial Executive, is such a postponement of the time for their coming into operation as may enable the noble Secretary of S.ate, to give to the whole suiject, with the light thrown upon it by the representations of the appelhnts, a candid re-coiibideratiou. Thus much, we presume, it is in the power of our Government to do ; but no more, unless it be to recommend our prayer 10 favourable notice. We have reason lor thinking that our Crown Land occupancy is as little approved by our Go^eraaieut as by the great bulk oi the colonists themselves; and that if the question were lett altoge* ther to their own disposal, the evils complained of would be effictually remedied, and remedied with the le,ist dtlay possible. But, in tl.e existing state of the law, even the Minister himself can exercise but little discretion in the lmsinebs. He is as much bound by the Act of Parliament as any one else. While it remains on the statute book, his duty is to obey and enforce its provisions. The act, however, though clothed with the nuthority of the tluee estates, is in reality his own creature. Parliament wns but the pasiive instrument o* its adoption. And as he made, bo he can unmake. On his motion, Parl.ament enacted a constitution for New Zealand ; on his motion, Parliament suspended that constitution ; and on his motion, it would have 'oeen altogether extingui-hed. When the colonies are •oncerned, Parliament is wonderfully facile. Any ! iing to save tiouble ; and so, to save trouble, the uoerat of the colonies is allowed to have lm own ?ay. Le him but say the word, and the Land Acts of IS 12 and 1846 cease to be. And this, we me firmly convinced, i» the only way in which our vicious land sybtem can be cured. All its ills, complicated and destructive as they are, spring from that mons roua dogma tint our wild acre» shall not be sold lor less than twenty shillings each. And of all these ills, none are so glaringly, so immediately, so pressmgly mischievous, as those which affect the Settled Dihtricts. Within the Hunts of these districts, comprising our cities, our towns, and our villages, and inhabited by fu'l nine-tenths of the entire population of the colony, the wi ste Lndt of the Crown are doomed to perpetual sterility. The law which decrees that they shall not be purchased in fee at a less price thtn one pound per acre, and that they shall not be occupied without puichaee, but on conditi m forbidding their cultivation, is virtually neither more nor less than a law to make void the primeval command, " Replenish the earth, a:id subdue it." The enactment of man is in direct collision with the enactment of his Creator ! Words cannot expiess the abhorence and indignation ■with which the thinking colonists regard this daring outrage on the fhst law of nature. We hope our readers have not forgotten the soulstirring letter addressed to his Excellency the Governor, published in this journal on the 11th ultimo, under the signature of " tublicus," on the subject of these hateful regulations. It abounds with tacts not to be denied, and with arguments not to be confuted. It point! out the incontestable truth, that even under existing arrangements, the agriculture of the colony has never been equal to the task of supplying its inhabitants with bread ; and chargei upon the new regulations the guilt of coeicmg our agriculture into a still more deplomble impotency. "On that day," the Ist January, 1849, says the writer; " the earth is to be locked up, the ploughshare broken, the harrow untied, the sickle snapped, and no grain is to be sown on the lands of the Crown. Where then (he asks) shall the people seek for sustenance ? Shall they seek it in the rented land of the freeholder f If found necessary for the freeholder who has homesteads of his own, flats and uplands, alluvial and fertile, to buy wheat of the little squatter, (which hundreds, nay thousands are doing at this moment, as being cheaper than growing it themselves,) how shall the man subject to a rental grow with profit ? How make up his reut money ? How support his family ?" Adverting to the appalling increase of pauperism in the mother country, and to the probability of extensive emigiation to the Australian colonies, he asks, with reference to these anti-growing regulations, " How are the thousandi upon thousands who will be cast npon these shores, to deiive support? Nay, how to be employed ? Shall it be said on purchased lands ? There will be none, excepting those already purchased ; for no bargains will be struck at 20s, an acre, or £ J 640 for 640 acres. I would fain ask what lands hare been purchased at that rate, and in those golden blocki ; and what lands will be bought on such prohibitory conditions ?" Oa the subject of the prohibition to cultivate, as laid down by the Order in Council, the report from our Select Committee on the Minimum Upset Price of Land, brought up on the 27th September last, he has the following cogent remarks : " The object of the prohibition to cultivate ii of courie sufficiently manifest : it is intended to compel the purchase of land, by giving the owner in fee simple a monopoly of the employment of agriculture. Your Committee object to this expedient as utterly inconsistent with the principles of economical science. It appears to them to be an unsound policy to tax the consumer of agricultural produce, for the sake of enhancing the Land Revenue ; and, because the land is found not to be worth the price which the govern* ment demands for it, to eke out that value by giving to the purchaser a monopoly of agriculture. If, however, there was any prospect that this price would be obtained for any considerable qatwuity of land, the

objection might be thought rather theoretical than practical ; but as landVill never be sold to any extent at the present minimum price, the prohibition to cultivate it before sale is nothing more or less than an absolute prohibition of cultivation altogether. It is the peculiar infelicity of the policy of government, tint it renders the land unsaleable, nnd at the same time annexes the most ruinous conditions to occupation without purchase— that it renders it impossible to buy, and then punishes the colonists for not being able to overcome the impossibilities which it has created — • tbat having first decreed that land shall remain unsold, it superadds tho condition that when it is unsold, it shall be uncultivated. Out of a territoiy oj 30 1,000,090 of acrei, not 25,000 have been sold in the last four years ; and the 300,000,000 acres ate to lemain desolate till they are bought at this rate— an operation, which would require for its completion, 48,000 years." We do hope that the good example now set, by some country districts, in calling public meetings to take these regulations into consideration, with the view of obtaining their eventual lepeal, will be piomptly followed throughout tbe colony. The danger apprehended is in no sense of the word imaginary, nor do we believe it has been exaggeratt d. But we would recommend all who take a part in the movement to keep the fact distinctly in view, that neither the responsibility nor the power rests with tbe colonial government— that the odium belongs entirely to the authorities at home, with whom alono lies the ability to avert the desolation with which the Laud Orders are fraught.