LAND AGITATION.

Southland Times, Issue 1058, 18 November 1868, Page 3

LAND AGITATION.

The Tuapeka District is in the throes of a land agitation. The G-overninent have thrown to the people 3000 acres out of Mr James Smith's run, but it has been accepted with thanks. Their appetite is only whetted by it ; or as the local paper (' Times') puts it, " The people are made conscious of their strength by this prompt surrender, and are at the same time irritated by its manifest insufficiency. At another pavt of the district a smaller concession was made, as, from the same authority, we learn : — "They (the people) have been graciously granted a portion of land which should never have been denied ; and at the same time the runholder is euabled, by the timely warning of ' his friends in office/ to drive ten thousand sheep on the ground, and thus render it useless for depasturing purposes, for one season at any rate." We are glad to see Mr Basting, chairman of the Land League. This is a safe guarantee for law and order, but not before it was required. The hon. W. G-. T. Clarke, alias " Money" Clarke has been driving the people mad in Mount Benger district. He increased the rate of depasturing to £1 per head, offered to give the people £1 per head, to take every hoof of cattle or horses away, and would listen to no reason. Yet the people have not broken the law. They are, however, being driven to it. The journal already quoted, commenting upon these proceedings, remarks :— " We cannot but feel astonished at the calm way in which our Mount Benger friends submit to be thus driven from house and home ; but their lawabiding resolutions are most digaified, and must have some influence in determining the question. Those are the men — those peaceful respecters of

i the law whom injury can never excite to outrage — those are the men' we say, whom an infatuated Government are driving ■ out of the country. " Clarke's run is composed of four applications laid into one, and is about 141~000 acres in extent, and for which he pays the Government 1 the magnificent sum of £1,400 by his own statement, or something over 2£d per I acre. An advertisement appears headed [ "Shoulder Arms," calling the miners ! together at the Court-house, Moa Plat, to I consider their position, and ends thus _« Shoulder to Shoulder," " Unity is Strength," "Eureka.' Things have evidently reached a dangerous piteh. The > 'Tuapeka Press' sap:— "The- people require to live ! and live they must and will. The people seek to prosper, and prosper they will, in spite of (not by means of) their rulers. Barriers strong and mighty may be placed in the way — so strong that, perhaps, like the solid fortifications of the Malakoff and Redan, they may successfully resist the finest artillery the world ever saw ; but be it remembered that those batteries may he stormed, as were the fortifications to which we have referred ; for if once the fort itself is made the battle-ground, in this case, as in that, the victory will be with the assailants." — ' Wakatip Mail.'