The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1879.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5632, 18 April 1879, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY). FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1879.

•It is often assumed in INew Zealand that : the sale of . Crown, land on deferred pay’ments affords a satisfactory solution of ■ the difficulty hitherto felt in preventing the ■abaorbtion of large blocks of land by “ landsharks ”or capitalists. Ic will be, 'therefore, rather a surprise to many to 'hear that in Victoria the present scarcity of money has been attributed to the presence, in the community of a similar class-of landholders, viz., the free selectors. Owing ,to bad seasons and bad farming these tenants of the Crown are behindhand in their payments, and have become borrowers from the banks.throughout the land. The pressure they have' exercised may well bo considerable, as according to the latest returns there had been in. Victoria only eleven million acres sold up to the end of 1877, while there were of selected lands of which the purchase had not been completed no less-than eight million acres. In New Zealand it is evident that the present tightness of the money market cannot be attributed to this cause, as the number of deferred payment landholders is insignificant; nevertheless, the objections which in practice have been proved to arise through the creation of the class

hold good. In .this colony , farmers and landholders arepressed for money, because, in a great many cases advances upon their produce which they drew from their merc ihanta or bankers were not realised, and { n - consequence a 'balance has had to -be rei nit ted from New Zealand to London j ns> cad of. the process being reversed, as Is us

It is a curious fact that in Canterbury, according to the, last agricultural returns, the number of holdings have actually decreased during the past year, in spite of the many large estates which have been broken up. Including the Cheviot district, the figures, as given by the Christchurch “Press,” are as follows:—“In 1878 “ there were—freehold, 30G0 estates ; “ rented, 1406 ; part rented and part “freehold, 603; total, 5069. In 1879 — “ freehold, 3016 ; rented, 1133 ; part “rented and part freehold, 585. There “ were therefore 44 less freeholds, 273 “ less rentholds, and 18 less holdings “ partly free and partly rented, or “a total of 333 in all.” This decrease is the more striking when we take into consideration the largo and rapid increase in the acreage under wheat oats and barley, an area which has increased in Canterbury from 247,682 acres in 1878 up to 320,045 in 1879. Our reason for referring to Canterbury in this matter is because Canterbury is par excellence the grain-growing province of Hew Zealand, as she claims more than half of the whole acreage under grain crops in New Zealand. This acreage in February, 1878, amounted to 456,463 acres, being an increase on the previous year of 136,452 acres, according to the New Zealand statistics. It appears, therefore, that in the most purely agricultural district of the whole colony it has been ascertained that while the acreage under tillage has increased nearly 30 percent., the number of holdings both freehold and leasehold has diminished very considerably. In other words, there is more farming, but fewer farmers. It is admitted that during the past few years everyone who could scrape a few pounds together invested in land and went farming, and yet in spite of this constant influx of recruits the army of landowners shows an absolute decrease. A consideration of the figures quoted above shows that the renthold estates have decreased in by far the greatest ratio, the decrease during the year having amounted to very nearly 25 per cent, of the whole number. We believe that this dimunition is due to the fact that a large proportion of the tenants go farming with little or no previous knowledge of the craft and soon come to grief. The average tenant who offers himself in the colony, whether as a tenant of an individual landlord, or as a leaseholder from the State, under the name of a deferred payment selector, is not a man with any means of his own beyond as much as will pay for the usual stock-in-trade of the farm.

Both in New Zealand and in the other Australian colonies it is gradually becoming more and more evident that it is a mistake to encourage the settlement:of the land by a class of men who are not at all certain to prove permanent settlers. It has been proved that in New South Wales and in Victoria, when hard times come, the payments due to the State have to be relaxed, and as the tenants constitute a powerful class of voters at any election there is an evident'risk of political demoralisation. A weak Ministry desirous of maintaining power might be glad of an excuse to forego rents when a general election was near in the hope of securing votes. The number of agricultural tenants of private owners in Canterbury grows rapidly less in, spite of the large increase in the amount of land brought under tillage. Selectors in Victoria and New South Wales are constantly in arrears with their payments to the State, and in consequence either abandon their holdings or are absolved from payment, and in Victoria their impecuniosity has embarrassed, the whole finance of .the colony. We believe that many are infected by the land fever who have no qualifications for the task they undertake, and though we earnestly desire to see a numerous and thriving classof yeomanry settled on the : land as freeholders andlandowners, we think that the sale' of land on long deferred payments is apt to act as an unhealthy stimulus to settlement, and one which in the end is neither bene-,' cial to the individual settler, the Government, nor the colony at large.. The sale of agricultural land in small blocks, with occupation clauses, and on easy terms of payment extending over one or two years, is a system which may work very well; but if the term of payment is ex-tended,''the-'Manger of the Goverment being regarded as a wealthy landlord, well able to do without his rents, is very great, and this risk should be guarded against. There is no reason for supposing that tenants of the Crown in New Zealand as • a class (would differ much from tenants of a private landlord. De-ferred-payment landholders with a payment extending over a long series of years are practically tenants of the Crown, and experience in other colonies proves that it is difficult to enforce rents, and that if they are enforced, a large proportion of the tenants sell out: to 'their wealthier 1 neighbors, leaving large estates with an impoverished soil behind them. In all new countries there is a tendency to maltreat the land in this fashion ; but a man who has only a temporary interest in the land, and but little to lose, knows that he can do so with impunity.