The Land Bill.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43116, 11 July 1907, Page 2

The Land Bill.

(Continued from last issue)

He would turn to the limitation of the estates—the most important, in his opinion, ' of the whole of the provisions of the proposed Bill. —They would agree with him that for a country like this, one of the greatest matters of statesmanship should he to bring labour and land together—to bring upon their f ertile land men and women who could lead healthy, happy lives; who could add to their own good, fortune and the prosperity of the oounty. He believed that the true aim and the best aim thoy could set before them was by hook and by crook to extend the settlement upon their lands. He took leave to think that even the town of Palmerston would he a bigger and a better and a mere prosperous place if more of- the areas round about were settled more closely than they now were. —(Applause). Those who had not been in Hawke’s Bay really knew nothing of the evils of large holdings. He would give a few figures which would set any responsible man thinking, if he did not know them already. The return he quoted from was one of a few years ago—l9o3. It was the last available return, and what was contained therein had not substantially altered. It was table six of Parliamentary Paper |B, page 20. It contained the list of proprietors who owned 10,000 acres and over. The number was nearly 200, and they owned 5,000,000 acres. That was about 7,800 square miles of good country. Sixty of these —there might be a little less now, but not much—were in Hawke’s Bay, and they owned a total of 1,200,252, or on an average of more than 20,500 acres, all, or nearly all, open to railway. The country was well roaded, the railways ran right through much of it. It was supplied by all public services, telephones, post offices, and so on. There they had an area held by sixty men, which, if divided into 300-acre blocks, would settte 4,200 settlers and their families —(Applause). That was not all. There was in Hawke’s Bay, some of the richest land in the colony. Probably there was no other province so rich in good land as the province of Hawke’s Bay. It provoked their indignation that these men held in their iron grasp all these big estates, some of them over 50,000 acres in area, and it drove them back to the remoter parts of the colony—had driven them back from Hawke’s Bay to the foot of the Ruahine Ranges. Let them contrast the east and the west. Contrast Taranaki with Hawke’s Bay. Taranaki had been won largely from the forest; tfie settlers of Taranaki had to hew their homes in many cases out of dense forests, and they had done it. They found in Taranaki over thirteen persons to the square mile, and in Hawke’s Bay, which was much richer, they found nine persons. Here lay the main task; the best task the Government could take up was the adoption of some scheme by which these huge holdings would yield to closer settlement, and give place to men and women and children. He would like them to remember that there was not only an advantage to the individual by this closer settlement, but if they took the total product obtained from these large estates when cut up they would find that had been doubled, and. in many cases more than doubled. He had fought in different courts the great Hatuna case, and finally the State acquired the estate. When the case was last before the Court Chief Justice Prendergast was told that this would he a ghastly mistake, and that Hatuna was producing more sheep and wool and other products than if they divided it up between 150 settlers. Mr Ritchie had informed him it had doubled the products it had under the single hand of Mr Russell, who owned it previously. There was an economic gain, and not an economic loss, in this division of land among men who were prepared to work for their own good and for the good of the whole community.

THE EAETH HUXGEE. They realised all this, and what he was submitting to them was eloquently reflected in the fact of the hunger for land for settlement, which pervaded the whole colony at the present hour. Six hundred persons applied for one selection in the North Island the other day, and for another 400 applications were sent in. They must get the land for these landless people, and they would get it —the only question was by what method. They were told the best scheme —and he would call their speoial attention to it, because he claimed to be able to speak with more experience than many—was to sell the freehold to all the Crown tenants, and with the money got from them they would go into the market and buy more estates for closer settlement. That was a mischievous proposal. Its first effect would be to still further increase the price of the lands of the country. In five years they had spent £8,000,000 on public works. This had been spent in the different districts, and they would find, if they carefully looked at it, that it had largely had the effect of increasing the value of the large holdings in Hawke’s Bay and elsewhere. He did not say it had not improved the value of the smaller holdings, but as the larger owner had the larger holdings he was proportionately benefited. On the purchase of lands they had. spent £5 000,000, on advances to settlers £5*,00,000; total £IO,OO ',OOO. All this had the effect, in addition to other reasons —this was not the only one —of increasing the price of land which the Government had sought to buy. Suppose this country were owned by a private individual —supposing that one of them was wealthy enough to own the whole country, and he was running it as an intelligent manager of a huge estate, would he leave immense areas, such as they found in Hawke’s Bay and in other parts of the colony —areas tapped and served by railways, and roads and all the other public conveniences—would he leave that either partially, imperfectly, or wholly unused, and send men and women back to other parts which in winter were wholly inaccessible? Certainly not. He would settle the parts accessible by railways first, and allow the more remote parts to come into settlement in good time. We had to limit tho large estates, both as regards the present and tho future. Two ways were suggested. First there was the Land Bill proposal re all excess over £50,100 unimproved value as regarded the present, and as regarded the future the £15,000 limitation. There was also the other proposal to deal with the aggregation of estates by means of the Graduated Land Tax. He had no doubt as a lawyer that the Land Bill, in_ so far as it provided for these limitations, was liable to evasion. It was difficult to frame a law which some other lawyer would not find a way through. It might be that the Graduated Land Tax would escape this liability to evasion, hut it was a question of attaining th® end, not a question of the means to attain it, that mattered. (To be Continued.)