New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, March 10, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 689, 10 March 1852, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK’S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, March 10, 1852.

The shifts to which our opponents are reduced in their efforts to disparage the memorial now in course of signature are so clumsy as to be positively ludicrous. However much we might feel disposed to pity them, we cannot refrain from laughter at their desperate condition, and our pity is changed to contempt. First the memorial is assailed, and selfish and interested motives of all kinds are unsparingly imputed to the promoters of it; the steady progress of the memorial, however, and the number of signatures it daily continues to receive, is a complete contradiction to their statements, while their personalities only recoil on themselves, since their selfishess is too glaring, and has been too openly exhibited to deceive any one, or allow their assertions to gain credence for a moment. The exhibition at the last meeting of the Bowie Knife Association of the disinterested motives of the prominent members of that body was too instructive to be altogether lost on the settlers. Then we are asked to wait for some indefinite period, and there is every reason to suppose that probably some fine day we shall find we have not taken much by waiting. Lastly we are told that to grant what the Independent calls money scrip to the Absentees, is to annihilate the land fund for years to come, and produce unnumbered mischiefs, and that those engaged m getting signatures to the Memorial studiously conceal the fact that the issue of money scrip would be revived by the Land Claimants bill. The answer to this last assertion is the fact that the memorial has been printed so that every one might read it, and every information has been offered re’ specting it to persons wishing to be informed of its nature and contents. It has been openly submitted, to the public, and any attempt at concealment is out of the

question. But more than this, th ments of his Excellency, i n his • 6 with the deputation, were chiefly^?’ 6 * this very point, and c diction,-for not the slightest atteJ '' been made to refute them.— tllu ,/ “ version of the absentee orders %r land scrip available at the Government land would cause the transfer of these from the absentee to the settler, and tend to a more speedy revival o f fund than any other system. The amount of absentee scrip is stated by th'? 1 dependent to be £200,000. By the 0 a'' nance this scrip is available at all '' ment sales in the colony; it cannot p u ; c ? more than 200,000 acres, if land offered? sale in any locality fetches more than th' upset price, a greater amount of be absorbed, in other-words, a less of acres will be given than was contemplated. We are gravely asked what assurance is there that the scrip w jl] h e So n at a discount ? It is obvious unless the scrip is sold at a discount there is no j Q ducement to buy ; if the intending purchase, at a Government land sale cannot buy Bc d D for less than twenty shillings he will p av j Q cash for his land. If the scrip i 8 at ’ par purchasers of land, who are not holders of scrip, will pay in cash; if the scrip is ata discount it will the sooner be absorbed, es. pecially when it is available in both Pro. vinces. The disputes and differences coo. nected with the land question have had the effect of practically annihilating the land fund for the last seven years; the readiest way to revive it is to effect a complete and final, not a partial, settlement of the land question and to issue Crown Grants to the landholders, so that at last they - may have a title to their property, and this may be proved from the recent transactions in land, the prospect of speedily obtaining a crown grant having led to extensive sales of land. We may also add, in confirmation of the justness of his Excellency s views, that absentee scrip to the' amount of some thousands of pounds has been purchased by the settlers arrived by the Agra (and purchased, it is reported, at a considerable discount) and there can be no doubt that their example will be followed by other intending colonists—that the same thing will continually occur on the sailing of each emigrant vessel for the colony—until, with the exception of the Hutt and some other localities, in a few years an absentee land owner will be as great a curiosity as the Moa in New Zealand.