THE LAND QUESTION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2156, 16 February 1880, Page 3

THE LAND QUESTION.

Professor Pearson thus speaks, in an article in the Victorian “ Review ” for February, of the results of land legislation and the land tax in Victoria : “ I believe a proper revision of the land laws—such as has not been attempted or even approached —to be the first positive reform that ought to be carried one under an amended Constitution. The prospect is much more serious than it was three years ago. Wc are alienating land at the rate of more than a million acres a year; we have sold nearly two-thirds, and wc have established a' yeomanry. No doubt our returns tell us of more than 100,000 persons engaged on farms and stations ; and better still, of more than 90,000 holdings of between 90 acres and (500. Put against this we must set the ominous warnings of the Surveyor-General, that of nearly.2,ooo,ooo acres alienated under the conditions of the Land Act of 18G2, not 2 percent., so far as he can judge, remains in the occupation of the original selectors ; and that of about a million and a-half taken up under the Act of 18G5, the general settlement only amounts to between 15 and 25 per cent. The statistics of 1876-7 give the area of properties over 10,000 acres at 4,181,218. In a little more than a year, the return of Oct. IG, 1878, shows that the former class had increased to 7,150,135, and the latter to 4.(579,102. More than the entire increase, it will be noticed, has been in the size of those holdings of over 10,000 acres which the land tax was meant by its Liberal framers to discourage, and which we are often told by its Conservative opponents the land tax has injuriously affected.