THE LAND QUESTION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2677, 18 October 1881, Page 2

THE LAND QUESTION.

[to the editor] Sir, —We all know that during the last six years there has been nothing done with the leasehold lands of the Crown, at least not in Canterbury, where we have seen hundreds of people come into the country and leave it, as there was no chance for them to get a home on the soil, and all that time the country could have been receiving from two to four times the revenue that was received. Why has the subject been passed over from time to time ? Simply because we have had an aristocratic, sheepowning Upper and Lower House, who do not like to take the bread from their own mouth, but would sacrifice the good of the country to self interest. Anyone who has been in New Zealand for any length of time cannot but see that the large landholders and runholders hare ruled the country, and are most certainly responsible for our large national debt and heavy taxation. Land at Homo during the early part of New Zealand’s history was worth some £3O per acre, and it might have been argued that land would come to be very valuable here. But as soon as the dominant party had secured all the country they got a good tool, Sir Julius Yogel, to carry forward public works and immigration, and now there is nothing but second-hand land at high prices, and a poor man has no chance, and a man of capital less, unless he wants to be ruined. America comes to the fore here, with her millions of acres at from 4s to 8s per acre, and swallows up all Great Britain’s small capitalists, and New Zealand is left in the rear with a heavy debt and no population to bear it. It might have been right had not America come to the fore, and had grain kept up. The law-givers might have been able to sell land at prices higher than they gave, and settle a good quantity of the land ; but the gigantic land speculation, owing to American competition in grain and their free country, has burst up, and now Sir Julius Vogel, who was only a cat’s paw, is denounced as a rash speculator, and as having done incalculable harm to the country. And now we are told how much good the Hon. John Hall and his Government, with Mr Wakefield and others, are doing, and likely to do, for the country. I say if such men are allowed to control the country, it is quite evident we shall have a country as bad as England in the matter of taxation, where it is hardly possible to exist unless a person has an immense income. The rich may pay, but the poor will be ground pretty close. For laboring men it will be as poor a country as can be found anywhere. Now it behoves lovers of liberal Government to come forward and do their utmost to make the country such that they and those that come after them can enjoy it. “ LI BERTAS.”