POST SESSIONAL ADDRESS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2210, 4 June 1891, Page 4

POST SESSIONAL ADDRESS.

The Hon. John McKeozie addressed his constituents at Palmerston South last Monday evening. His speech is so important and so able that we have decided to give the main portion of it in ful], and as we shall not have room for it in this issue it will be continued in future issues. GENERAL REMARKS, Mr McKenzie prefaced his remarks by saying that after four months’ recess the country would be satisfied that. 'Ministers, .had; taken.:the right coarse in asking for a second session, which had enabled them to get a grasp of the whole of the affairs of the colony, and they were how in a position to meet the House with proposals which would, he felt sore, meet with' the support of the House aod the country. Immediately on going into office each member of the Government went carefully into the affairs of his' department, and came to the conclusion that a ■' very large amount of retrenchmet could be made in the'public service without impairing ’ its efficiency. They had during the four months they had been in office reduced the public expenditure by between £50,000 and £60,000, and the public servise he ventured to say, was being carried on at the present moment just as well as it was on the day they took office. In every instance of retrenchment the matter had > been'submitted to and agreed to by the Governmentjas a whole, and no individual action was taken. Ministers would 5 be prepared to answer to Parliament for their retrenchment, and if they were defeated the electors , would j have a ypice in the matter before it was finally settled. Ministers believed they were right, and they were prepared to stand or fall by their actions, and by wbat the people of the colony would decide at the ballot box. The policy of the Government was one of no borrowing; to live within their means, and. to rely on their owh resources. They believed that if such a policy were to be carried out for a few years they would have such confidence restored as would bring about progress and prosperity throughout New Zealand. They believed they had been living long enough, and too long, on borrowed money. Eecognising that too much money was being taken out of the pockets of the people for postage than was necessary to carry on the service, the Government had determined to reduce postage throughout the colony; and a scheme would fie'submitted to Parliament for alteration of the incidence of taxation, •o as to equalise the burden of by reducing that now borne by bone fide settlers, the industrious classes, and the masses of the people. Another measure would be reform of the Upper House,' limiting the time whio . members of that body could retan: their seats. Whether they would b. able to carry such a measure through the (Douncir was doubtful, but they meant to make an honest endeavor to have it passed. The Government would also introduce a, Bill dealing with the electoral laws, find' an efiort would be made to have the rolls properly purged* so that the names of all those improperly on any roll would be struck out. Measures dealing with labor and capital would be submitted to Parliament, which would prevent tke undue clashing of those twd great interests, Buch measures would'nor be of a; revolutionary character, nor would! they contain any fireworks, bu> they would be such as he hoped would meet with the approval of both labor class and the capitalists, aod while preserving the rights of labor they would give fair play to capital, TIE LAND QUESTION. He bad been accused continually by the Conservative Press of endeavoring to prevent anyone from becoming a freeholder. He bad no such intention, and be never lost an opportunity 6t saying ad when speaking on the land question. , But wbat he did say, and what he was going to say again that night, and was prepared to stand by, was that if the Government was going to give special inducement to people to settle upon the land it should see that it got bona fide settlement. 1 he Government could not; possibly shut its eyes to the' fact that in the past there bad been a great deal of specula tion with these special settlements, people forming; themselves into associations and taking up the land for settlement on special conditions, and never doing anything to the land,.hut. retaining it until such time as they could dispose ’ of it at a profit. He had also been accused of taking away from the people of the colony rights which had been granted to them by his predecessor ' in office; He had seen it stated by the Conservative Press that he had amended the regula tions made by the Hon. G, P, jßichardoon, the late . Minister of Lands" Now, the fact was that Mr Richardson had never made any special settlement regulations. The regulations which he (Mr McKenzie) had amended, which were now in existence, were first made by the Hon. J Balance (the present. Premier of the colony). In 188,6, unde? flection* 162 and 163 of “ The Land A ct, 1885,” Mr Ballance’s own Act, Mr Ballance created a number of special settle- , ments under those regulations, but Mr .Richardson did not form a single settlement under them. It was true 1 that Mr Richardson bad carried out i some regulations that were pending £ for the settlement of blocks when he ( took office, but he himself had not created a single special settlement, 1 #opd those regulations' when be (M* t

McKenzie) came into office were a dead letter. He, however, immediately took the regulations in hand and amended them both as regarded village settlements and farm homesteads. The village settlement regulation a were amended to meet the demands of the people who had little or no capital, with the hope that a little encouragement might induce them to. leave the towns and become 'useful settlers. The farm homestead regulations were amended to meet the requirements of people who had ! a little' capital, but hot sufficient to become freeholders, and under those 1 regulations he had provided that the land should be taken up on the perpetual lease system. On the other band, the Hon. Mr Richardson's: amendment of the Land Act of 1687 gave Mr Ballance’s homestead settlers the right to puichase, and was the means of opening wide the door for speculation. Thera could be no doubt of this being the fact, as he could prove It from returns in his possession and in the possession of the department in Wellington, in eonnisction with these special settlements. Therefore, to prevent furtherjspeculation and to retain the freehold in the bands of the Crown, he had determined only to provide for perpetual leases. The village settlers had never been granted the right to acquire freehold, and be attributed to this rule the fact that, at the present moment, so many of those people were still retaining possession of the land. ;He had noticed in his travels through these village settlements that great progress bad been made, and that, in many cases, people who were destitute when they first went on their village allotments were now in a fairly comfortable position. , They mails no compliiiht of the kind came from other people in the different districts, who were inclined to buy up the village settlement allotments and who were very much disappoihted that they could not de so. The farm homestead special settlements, ©n the ether hand, are, in many cases* a wilderness, and the process of creating large estates out of them is going an extensively. He nimself had seen on® property of over two thousand.'acres created out of one of these settlements; he had gone round it himself. (Applause.) Now, speaking of the land Jaw in general: tie bad predicted in 1887, when speaking on the second reading of the Hon Mr Richardson’s Land, Bill, that the door would be opened wide to speculation, to duthmyism and to all Horts of frauds, including false declarations in connection with our land laws. He was pooh-poohed at the same time for doing so, hut he thought the time had'now arrived when the people could see what the great ?vils of that measure bad bees, the necessity for an ammendment e£ the *and laws was recognised not only by aimstfif, but also by bis predecessor iurl every right-thinking man in the Colony. I hen, if they were going to amend the land laws and take a new departure, they should certainly try to at oid the errors of the pfistr Going over the whole Colony of New Zeajahd anyone must be struck with the immense estates be would meet with in every portion of the Colony. He hacL recently travelled through the Hawke’s Bay provincial district, where large estates predominated. He had driven ten miles through one estate comprising the, most beautiful land, wihkdut ever seeing 1 the smhke of a bouse er meeting a single individual add that was only one of a great many .more of the same sort, they were told that there were forty-seven people owning three million acres of land, and he asked them if it was possible for this colony te prosper under such circumstances. He bad bad a return prepared by Mr Percy Smith, the dusveyor-General of the Colony and the bead of the Lands Department, which showed that they bad only 2.800.000 acres of Crown lands \ suitable for settlement (first and second-class land) left. He also had another return, showing that during the last three years the Colony had . disposed of under cash, deferred pay- * ment, and perpetual lease conditions and for small grazing runs, rural land to the extent of 1,325,842 acres, or very nearly one-half of what'was now .left. If they continued the samd process for six years longer, the whole of our land would be gone from ua for . ever. The Colony had, as they were aware from the last census returns, lost a large number of its population, Net only had it lost a number equal te the total Dumber of immigrants who came to the colony,. but, it. had aled lost twenty thousand'of its natural increase. What did this mean P It meant that we had feared And educated twenty thousand people in New Zealand to s»nd them away elsewhere! Was it net then our duty to stem that fatal tide, and was is not alse as great a duty to carefully husband the 2.800.000 acres of land we had left! and secure at any rate that no further large estates would be created out of that area ?