THE LAND SYSTEM IN VICTORIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4385, 9 April 1875, Page 3

THE LAND SYSTEM IN VICTORIA.

(From the Aryus, March 30.) Within the last few says we have been favored with the candid and undisguised confessions that the land systems of the last ten years have resulted in unqualified failure. This admission has not come from the opponents of these systems, which we have again and taagain demonstrated to be ruinous to the 'colony, and most unfair and inequitable.to the great bulk of the colonists, but from those who have wilfully closed their eyes to their defects, misrepresented their operation, and up to the present time have persistently insisted on their efficacy, and either denied or exdused their shortcomings. With that purblind obedience to the behests of unreasoning agitators which of late years has been so characteristic of the majority of our legislators, an entirely new mode of disposing of the Crown lands of the colony was designed.and brought into operation. Under it the squatter, the capitalist, and in fact every one who could afford to purchase a piece of land, was to be rigorously excluded from all chance of becoming its proprietor. From all these, country agricultural lands were to be carefully locked up, and to be reserved for what was termed " the bona fide settler." He was to obtain them for about one-fifth of their proper value, totally irrespective of the injustice which was perpetrated towards all other classes of the community. The result of this one-sided and unfair system is now declared by its advocates to be " the rapid and gigantic growth of the evil of land monopoly." The land law of 186f> was not deemed sufficiently exclusive, and therefore that of 1869 was designed to remedy its defects, and still further to limit the number of those privileged by Act of Parliament to become landed proprietors. The latter law, as was foreseen by all persons possessed of common sense, has proved just as ineffectual in securing the desired end as the former.

No doubt, so far as relates to the mere taking up of the best available lauds of the colony, botli the hind acts referred to have been emi-

nently successful, but here the success has ended. Neither settlement nor profitable cultivation has followed selection to anything' like the extent which the advocates of these laws seemed fondly to anticipate. The reason is obvious. Granted that on the one hand great facilities were, provided for persons of moderate means, to take up and cultivate land ; on the other every inducement was offered to sell the land thus taken up at a very handsome advance upon the paltry sum paid for it to the State, and to repeat the very profitable transaction in some distant portion of the colony. This may not as yet have been done to any very great extent under the Act of 1869, because sufficient time has not yet elapsed to allow very many of the selectors under it to become possessed of the fee-simple, but in considering this, question, the operation of both Acts must be taken together, for both are based upon the same principle, and it is notorious that numbers of selectors under the Act of 1865 have parted with their land either to become selectors under the Act of 1809, or to make a raid upon the country across the Murray. In order to secure this result, the tenure of the pastoral tenants of the Crown was rendered most uncertain, and they were driven by the irresistible law of self-preservation to invest large sums in the purchase of land from selectors who themselves never had any real intention of occupying it. Save in very rare instances, the scruatters had no wish to become large purchasers of Crown lands. They could have employed their capital to far better advantage, but they wore involuntarily driven into the position in order to secure the proper working of their stations and themselves from utter ruin.

In some cases, no doubt, men have taken up land with tho best intention. —with a determination to form a home for themselves and their families —and have been bitterly disappointed in the result. Many of them found that they had eugaged in an occupation of which they knew literally nothing, and had embarked in a life for which they were utterly unfit. Others found no difficulty in cultivating their holdings, but could discover no remunerative market for their produce. And in both cases these unfortunate persons were only too glad to sell out to any one who would buy. By our very peculiar land legislation, an unnatural and unhealthy stimulus was given to settlement, or rather to selection, and at the same time immigration, 1 by which alone the evils consequent upon this condition of things could be abated, was almost entirely stopped. Those who are chiefly responsible for the unwise legislation which they say has resulted in the giganticgrowthof the evil of landmonopoly now coolly turn round and ask ÜBto destroy the evil which they assert they have created, by resorting to a most iniquitous system of class taxation. Having compelled the pastoral tenants of the Crown to purchase large areas

of land in order to preserve the industry in which they are engaged, and which is most essential to the welfare and prosperity of the colony, from absolute destruction, it is now proposed to impose such a tax as shall render it impossible for them any longer to hold the property of which under such circumstances they have become possessed. We have no wish to see the colony parcelled out amongst a few large landed proprietors, and there would have been little danger of anything of the -..ort occurring had the public estate been wisely dealt with. The monstrous injustice, however, of first compelling people to purchase land, and then punishing them for so doing, is so evident that comment becomes almost superfluous.