ORGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 299, 4 December 1862, Page 5

ORGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.

- (7b ilieJEdiiofiof <Ac,lUily, Times.) S; r— if any further reason was wanting why the present Provincial eouiicilshould not fegislate.on the land question, r the. discussion.on; the appointment of a conruiittee yesterday; would furuish it. Messrs M;Masfer, Walkgr, Os win, and Hardy, very properly objected to theirgom*. into the qu<s?tiya because— l, .tneyhati no powvr to deride,- and that their resolutions could only be acted on after the next meeting of the ben<-ral Assembly, when they would probably he disallowed: 2, because they did not represent more than oue-third the peop'e tbey proposed to bind by them. - To which the Government replied through Mr Dick, who stated that "he knew perfectly well they had no power to alter the law, and tbat their resolutions could only take effect 18 months hence, if al!owed;'thatall theycoulddo, even with the Governor's help, was to raise the price; but that he did hot think that since all agreed that the present regulations mre as unsatisfactory as they could be, the fact of their having no rower to do anything should prevent them from doing something." That was the substance of his reply, and having no more to say on the matter, be said it over again, as being something well worth remembering, and sat down with a whole bunch of neacock's feathers in his. cap. All that Mr McGlashan had to .say in favour of the proposal was, " That they had promised the Superintendent that, the committee having failed to make head or tail of the subject last session,'tbey would try thoir hands at it again 1 bis—so,, there ! isn't that a sufficient reason ?" It is only, fair to the Executive to say that although compelled.. by the pressing questions of Messrs Mc Master aud Walker to avow the resolutions to be their own as well as the Major's, they expressed themselves ready to take any other as a basis for legislalatiou. Only let us do something to immortalise ourselves before we become extinct as an Old Identity • before we let in, because we can't eventually help it' those hordes of utter barbarians, who now ' " Howl round our venerable fence, aud pres? To make our Eden one rude wilderness." . Only let us do something seemed to be the feeling • we cannot help meddling, though we are quite aware it can lead to nothing. ; Alas, that the dyiug strains of these swans should soun'J so like the gabblin* of geese. : We read, in Joe Miller most likely, of a quaker?s exhortation to his son to make money honestly, if possible, but to make mo^ey. The kindred axiom most in favor with the Executive seems to be—do something; Avise, if possible, if it is not possible, then something inexpressibly'foolish, rather tha i not be meddling. And, by Jove, they do stick to the principle iitce = bricks, only sometimes they forget the rede si jwssis, with rather too much indifference I should say.

Serioudy, ia it tolerable that 40,000 men should be governed by a set of -,welli swans^ then—who could perpetrate such wretched, mischievous twaddle as this'? They know that in any case their alterations cannot have legal effect for eighteen months; they are told, and no sane man doubts it, that they would most, certainly be disallowed, and that, therefore, if conditionally acted on, everything would be in worse confusion than ever; they must know, if they know •anything of business at all, that no London capitalist will lend them a shillinguuder such laws; they know that their restrictions have driven numbers of small capitalists to Canterbury, and the cure, they think, is —farther restriction; they know that virtually their proposed system of sales has been already twice tried with every ingenious help from the land ofiice, and resulted in the men of money buying all, the- " small capitalist ami laboring man" all but absolutely nothing ; and yet they expect human nature to alter if they only try it again on a larger scale. • There are three objects, the Government tell us, they wish to accomplish : 1. To enable the labouring-man to get land easily and cheaply. 2. To encourage its profitable occupancy through agriculture.

'•; 3. To prevent its being bought.iv large quantities by capitalists. '

,As to the rirst: in a country like ours a poor man can only stand on proximately equal terms with a rich one, when the price is higher than any man can afford to give for it for mere grazing, or to let lie idle on speculation. In proof of this, it may" be said that in Canterbury the poor man was greatly more in favor of a high price than the pilgrims of the second regime; and in Canterbury, though here you can buy as good land at 20s, and could buy ifc afc 10s, there is more land, bought'by the poor man, than there is here, and very much more cultivated. As to the second pointy I feel sure that it will be found, first, tbat. very little indeed has been done by farms arid laboring men in the matter of-cultivation. They have never during the H years of settlement produced enough for consumption, or anything approaching it; and yet not; more, probably, than 1 acre in 103 is in crop. How then can it be said that more land is wanted for agriculture 1 Yet that is the great cry 'to induce the Council to dispossess the squatters. Again I very much doubt whether the large purchasers have not in a much shorter time more -" profitably occupied" the land they have bought, than the smaller ones. And if any encouragement had been held out, or rather if every possible obstacle had not been thrown in the way, the land on many of the runs would have beaten Taieri and Tokomariro hollow. The system hitherto fostered, therefore, does not tend to make small men cultivate the land, but the Canterbury system of higher price and immediate title does.

3. As for the dream of keeping out capital from investment inland, it may be safely said, that as long as it pays any one, it will pay the capitalist, aud restrictions, are a far greater bugbear to the small than to the big man. Evaded they will eventually be, and those who enact them are gravely responsible for the immorality which they encourage. One only means there is, which in my.mirid would be less objectionable than the plan proposed, viz.:—To make it penal felony for any one who could be proved to possess more than a certain sum, to buy a suburban or rural section, either from Government or secondhand • let every such purchase be illegal, and let the money paid be forfeited to the Queen. You might then prevent capitalists from accumulating laud, but in doing this you would also bring about a few other results which would render this Province a not very attractive place for anybody else, least of all, probftV.ly, to the poor ihan. -In writing the above. I have tacitly assumed tbat the desire of the Government is philanthropic; bufc I have only assumed it for argument's sake. There is a persistent fighting against all evidence and all reason which, despite the amiable character of "the Superintendent and one or two others, leads one irresistibly to conclude that, whether consciously or unconsciously, there is mixed up with the desire to favor the laboring man and small farmer; a feeling of jealous animosity against the squatter. I avow this openly because I do not fear thejimputation of lack of that kind of charity which " thiukefh'ioo evil." If the Government would avoid any such imputation, in the-name of heaven and common, sense, let them at length bow to the force of evidence and of reason, and have done with such crazy prattle as we heard yesterday. ;: When we do alter the land laws, let us, at least, be guided where we can by experience, and not any more by the mere toddy-begotten phantasies of a generation of—well, savans.

Paroquet.