“THERE ARE OTHERS!”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8359, 20 February 1913, Page 6

“THERE ARE OTHERS!”

Th© “ Southland Dally News ” is to be commended for keeping a searchlight upon land transactions in its district carried out under the auspices of self-styled Reform. It will be remembered that some of the Tory journals rushed into paeans of jubilation the other day over an assertion that “if” the public is being sacrificed over certain dealings in land containing coal deposits, there have been many such similar transactions in the past. The particular case prompting all this discussion is now before the law courts in the shape of a summons against tho Crown, and comment is very properly forbidden for the time being. But we may observe, first, that whatever the outcome of tho lawsuit, two blacks do not make on© white, nor two wrongs a right. The inference, however, sought to be conveyed by the Conservative journals is that the Liberal Governments of the last generation which they so utterly hate were responsible for sacrificing some eighty square miles of coal-bearing territory, and that Opposition critics are raising objections now merely in the hope of making party capital out of the- circumstances. In a word, it has been urged that.the “New Zealand Times” and its Liberal friends have professed indignation over a transaction under Masseyism, while they ignored similar dealings under Liberalism. Now, the

eighty square miles appears to be a myth, to begin with. _ That wide area of coal-bearing land which is said to have been alienated for a nominal return by Liberal Governments has no existence save in the fertile imaginations ot land monopolists’ apologists. Not in the last thirty-five years have there been any such sales, so that there is not a single man in the whole army of Liberalism to-day, or in the party since it first came to its own in 1890, who is in the slightest degree responsible. The “Southland Daily Nows” gives the following as practically the whole of the coal-bearing land alienated in Southland: 18C6; Nightcaps coal area, 2660 acres, purchased from Crown by John iiare, at £1 per acre. 1866; Part Birchwood, li 52 acres, sold to I l '. S. Brown Holt, £1 an acre. 1878: Part Birchwood, 324 acres, sold to John Hare, £2 an acre. .1878 : Part Birchwood, 1166 acres, sold to New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company, and another portion (now Hedgers run), 817 acres, to James Gardner, £2 per acre. This, as our contemporary points out, shows a total area of 6719 acres, or about 10i square miles, iho average price was nearly 27s an acre, while some of the sales took place nearly hair a century ago, and the latest, as we say, so far back as thirty-five, years. Those were the days before the democracy became articulate—which entirely accounts for the situation. New Zealand, up to that period, had been governed by the Tory party, which, as we know from history, had conveyed away from the people not only valuable coal rights but also immense areas of the most valuable agricultural and pastoral lands in the country. It was to stop this malappropriation of the public estate that brought Sir George Grey out from his retirement in Xawau, considerably more than a quarter of a century ago, and it was his stirring and convincing oratory that awakened the public mind to a consciousness of the wrongs to posterity that were being perpetrated by the acta of the Twelve Apostles and the methods of “ gridironing ” so popular in those days. The work of Sir George Grey was carried on by Mr John Ballanoe, and later by the Eight Bon. R. J. Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward. Now, all those great men are dead except Sir Joseph Ward, and he has been driven from office by the influence and power of the land monopolists, who onoe more are free to work .their own sweet will upon the public estate. But public opinion is awakening again. These wrongs will not be allowed to continue unchecked.