The Patea Mail. (Published Wednesdays and Saturdays.) SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1879.

Patea Mail, Volume V, Issue 482, 6 December 1879, Page 2

The Patea Mail. (Published Wednesdays and Saturdays.) SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1879.

A cheat principle was laid down in the Financial Statement with respect to the light in which the Land Revenue should be regarded. For years past it has been argued in the Press of various colonies that Land Revenue was capital, and not income. When, two or three years ago, the sales of Crown Lands assumed such tremendous proportions in New South Wales, that the Government of that colony had to face a surplus of more than two millions of pounds in a single year, and ordinary politicians, who could not see beyond the ends of their own pug noses, had taken the short journey to their wit’s end to know what to do with the money, the Sydney Morning Herald came down with the astounding proposition that it was folly and inj’ustice to treat the surplus as income at all. It was logically maintained through a long controvery that, as the Land Revenue was the equivalent of the right of the State to the land, that equivalent should be inserted in such a way as to be of perpetual benefit to the State, and not squandered for the benefit of a single generation, much less for the gratification of a single year. The philosophy of the Herald, however, was regarded as Utopian by those who claimed to"be practical statesmen, and we believe that Maj'or Atkinson is the first colonial politician who has seriously enunciated the great principle that the I-and Fund is not the income of a generation, but the birthright of the people for ever. It requires no penetration to see that the Land Fund is of a temporary nature. Everybody knows that the Land Fund is not a leading item in the budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In old countries, practically the whole of the land has passed into private hands. Even in Victoria, nearly four-fifths of the total area of the colony have been alienated, and Crown Land sales will soon be a thing of the past. In New Zealand there are more than sixty millions of acres, of which about forty millions are more or less suitable for settlement. We have no figures before us as we write, but we have no hesitation in trusting our memory so far as to say that more than half of the habitable lands of the colony are alienable. The lands disposed of comprise the most accessible, the best, the most easily cleared of all the lands of the colony. Those that remain for sale are second class, like the Canterbury shingly land; or heavily timbered, like the West Coast of the South Island ; or held under Presumptive Right at a nominal figure : or difficult of access by railway or road ; or frontier lands, like the Waimate, that can be taken and held only at great expense ; or, finally, they are lands which must be purchased before they can be sold. It will appear from this that the palmy days of the Land Fund are numbered, as the unsold Crown Lands are so poor as to be unsaleable, except at

nominal rates, or so difficult of access as to absorb all or more than they all prodnee in the necessary public works. Clearly, then, the Land Revenue is a broken reed to lean upon, and should not be permitted to enter into our calculations ns a permanent asset. It is evident that the present huge deficit in which we are involved is mainly due to an unwarranted leaning upon the public estate to produce revenue for current expenditure, and it is to be feared that continued trust upon that source ot income will involve the colony in still further difficulties. If a man with a stated and secure income of, say, £I,OOO per annum, had also an estate which he agreed to sell, on condition that the purchase money was paid during a period of thirty years, in yearly instalments of such amounts as the purchaser found convenient; and if the vendor of the estate fell into the error of treating the purchase money as income, he would do just what these colonies have done. Let us suppose that the purchaser has a succession of prosperous years, in each of which he pays off £I,OOO, and that the vendor adds this to his income of £I,OOO, and regards himself as a man with £2,000 per annum, and lives up to that amount. Is it not evident that when hard times come, and the purchaser can only pay £SOO or £250 a year, that our foolish vendor will find himself in great difficulties on account of the extravagant habits he has formed owing to his false estimate of his income? This is just the position in which New Zealand now finds herself. Let v.s further suppose that our foolish man goes on living till the thirty years are past, and the last traction of the purchase money is paid and spent. Does he not then find himself suddenly a poor man ? For thirty years his expenditure has far exceeded £I,OOO, but now his means are limited to that amount. He has eaten and drunk his estate only to create appetites and desires which he can no longer gratify. This is the condition at which New Zealand will arrive in the course of a few years. The income from taxation will still be there, hut the Land Revenue will have vanished. Bat there is still another aspect of the foolish vendor’s position. Not only is he poorer than he was thirty years belore, but he has made his sou and his posterity poorer for ever. Had he invested the proceeds of the sale of his estate in debentures, shares, or land, his own income would have been equalised through life, and his children would have received their due. And this is, to our mind, the strong point of the case against the use of Land Revenue for the purposes of ordinary expenditure. IVe are eating the children’s bread before they are born. A future generation will say to ns : “ Where is your conscience ? You sold the estate of the nation at a nominal price, that you might put twenty or thirty miserable millions into your coffers. You spent those millions extravagantly, instead of paying your taxes, and then you borrow twenty or thirty millions more and leave ua to pay the interest of it—not from the ‘ Land Fund,’ for there is none but by taxation. If you had paid the interest on your debts with taxes, instead of with our birthright, you would probably have curbed your borrowing and spending instincts somewhat,”