SETTLEMENT OF POPULATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 200, 30 November 1871, Page 5

SETTLEMENT OF POPULATION.

(To the Editor.)

Sib, — In a recent leading article on the Moa Flat sale, you were pleased to congratulate the Teviot district on the frustration, by the Greneral Government, of the amiable designs of his worship Donald Reid and his confreres. Looking at the position of affairs at present, there is no doubt we have much to be thankful for; but the necessity for watchful care is as much, if not more, needed than ever. Men who have proved themselves capable of acting in the manner described in the report of the Select Committee of the Legislative Council, are fit for anything ; aud baffled as they have been in their recent bungling attempt, it is not improbable that some other weakly clause of the Waste Lands Act will be strained to obtain their nefarious ends.

Already it is reported that, undeterred hy their repulse, the parties concerned in tlie late abortive attempt to acquire the freehold of an entire district, have one or two bran new tactics to put into operation — tho one most relied upon being the offer to erect a bridge suitable for dray traffic at Roxburgh under the Public Works Act, payment to be taken in land situated at Moa Flat — whether the 8000 acres at 14s. Bd. an acre is included, the subscriber is not in a position to state. There are other stratagems aa yet in embryo, the developement of which will be watched with great interest, and with the progress of which you shall be duly made acquainted. My object in writing at present is to urge upon the inhabitants of Mount Benger the necessity for concerted action ; and with this object, I would suggest that a committee be formed at once to watch over the interests of tho community, similar in its-scope and design to that at Switzers, Mount Ida and Arrow. There can be no, doubt tluit much good haa be6ti effected by such associations, and notably in a receut case greatly affecting tlie mining interest at Switzers, the particulars of which are already too well known to the public to need repetition. Under the title of Constitutional Associations, Pastoral Associations, aud various other harmless-looking names, we have bad what in America (where they call a spade a spade) they call Rings, just as iniquitous in their operation and as injurious to the public interest as the Whisky Ring, Gold Ring, or Erie Ring — tho object' being, in the case of our New Zetilafid rling, to acquire the whole of the limited airaount of level land in the colony, Ipd thus possessing thetne.elves of .thediky of trie posiJ«on,»perm^nf»Titly eou-jj

vert it into a pastoral country — an object by no moana impossible to uwn. possessed of talents little inferior to Fi'sk, Jay, Gvmld, and other ingenious American financiers, although necessarily confined to a much more limited field.

With an obtuaeness really painful to witness, the majority of the population, whose birthright is thus squandered by political Judases, passively permit themselves to be despoiled, and all becau c they have not got the common sense to take a leaf out of the book of our shoddy aristoera^y,and like them combine — nofc, however, for a purpose contrary to the spirit o£ our constitution, but rather for purposes that are eminently constitutional, viz., settlement of population on the Waste Lands of the Crown, and other kindred object*. — I am, &c , VItHIAXCEMount Benger, 2 1st Nov., IS7L