LAND DUMMYISM.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 283, 3 July 1873, Page 6

LAND DUMMYISM.

(" Bendigo Advertiser")

It is late in the day to talk about putting down dummyism in the selection of land by squatters. The pastoral tenants have had their innings, and having scored well, have yielded up the willow. Nevertheless, the matter still demands attention, and some of our contemporaries have been ventilating it pretty freely of late. To read all that is published about it, one is led to think that the seat at the head of the land tribunal is not a seat of roses. On one hand we find its occupant abused for not taking sufficient steps for sweeping the vile thing off the face of the colony, and on another hand, we hear him rated for purtuing what seems to be a contrary course. The " Age," for instance, may say one day, that dummyism among she squatters is rampant in the Wimmera district, and that the Local Land Boards play into the hands of the breeders of sheep and oxen on Crown lands, while the head of the department, with a cloud of great severity on his manly brow, sits winking with his wicked eyes at the naughty doings of his subordinate courts. Has Mr. Casey been putting frills on in JElizabotb-street", or making mouths at the " Age ?" As a matter of fact, the squatters on the Wimmera, as generally elsewhere throughout the colony, had had enough of dummyism before Mr. Casey took control of the department ; and it is well known, as regards the Wimmera especially, that the land dummies are now acting ior quite a different class of persons. If the " Age " does not know this, it ought to know it, and must be aware that the days of squatting dummies are so nearly goue, that when any . wholesale infringments of the Act I take place, are attempted, or suspected, there must be other people behind the scenes pulling the strings besides the squatters. However, it seems that our pastoral friends are still being watched, the eyes of the land officials being kept pretty sharply on ,-my suspicious-look-ing persons with sheep dogs or stockwhips seen about the offices of the local land boards. As for example, a short time ago, Mr. A. C. Watson applied for some land on his brother's run of West, Ch:u-lton. The application was reconnr.'.Mi(W by the So. Arnaud Land Board, lisib the Minister of Lands, '•from information received" it is to be presumed, refused to grant it. Mr. Watson endeavored to argue the case, but the Minister said, while it would cause him regret to find he had really ■ione the applicant any injustic, still, *.he fact of a gentleman applying for a portion of the run of a near relation, might be deemed to savor a little of collusion, and, although Mr. Watson iiii^ht have the most honorable intentions, the case was one in which it behoved the department to act in such a manner as to guard againsi auy possible impropriet}'. Mr. Watson, as may naturally have been expected, did riot like this style of dealing with his application ; but who shall say, under the circumstances, that Mr. Casey was not perfectly j nstified 1 The "Age," and others say that he must put down and prevent dummyism. He had said himself that that is one of his main objects, and that his great desire is to promote bom fide settlement. Where, then, he has any reason to doubt the integrity of an application — such i*eason, for instauce, as in the Watson case — he is unquestionably quite right in refusing to allow the department to bs fooled. Yet, while he gets soundly abused for allowing the squatters to walk round him with their tools, he gets talked to in a different strain in another quarter. Mr. Watson has his sympathisers, and finds a very strong one in the "St. Arnaud Mercury," which journal rampages at the Minister of Lands in the following strain :—": — " What do we find as the net result of the decision in Mr. Watson's case. Why, that his application was refused because the land for which he applied was situated on his brother's run ? Is it come to this, then, that perjury and corruption are so rampant in Victoria that the mere fact of bi-others or perhaps intimate friends desiring to settle in the immediate vicinity of each other is to be held in Mr. Casey's Land Court as prima facie evidence of fraudulent collusion to evade the law 1 And yet absurd and almost inhuman as this objection seems when standing alone, we are at a loss to see what other ground there could be for refusing Mr. Watson's application." It is just as well perhaps that Mr. Casey's Ministerial career should not be all sunshine and compliment ; but when he gets under such opposite fires, he must be amused at his own involuntary duckings to avoid the shots. Bang from the groat gun in Elizabethstreet in order to dislodge him from a position supposed to be favorable to the squatters ; and pop from the little gun at St. Arnaud to drive him into their ranks. i: Is it come to this ?" inquires St. Arnaud in pious horror — to this — that respectable people are to be suspected of dummyism 1 Why, what have the eyes of St. Arnaud been doing all this long time? Surely they have not been so intently and perpetually fixed on its gold and silver treasures, these many years, that it has been unable to afford a glance at tho doings of the outer world. It might not be very safe to tell sotnetilummy employers or soeie .clanaray eteployes that ifeey

were not respectable ; for, of course, it is of respectable people only that the " St. Arnaud Mercury '■ is standing up in defence. It is very inhuman certainly to doubt the lona fides of any such persons. But let us get away from the crossfiring of those who regard the proceedings of the Minister of Lands in such different lights, and examine for ourselves the steps taken by him for the suppression of dummyism. In the first place, let ua repeat that the squatters are now almost out of the field of dummyism. having made hay in it while the sun shone. They were driven into illegal transactions by the fear of ruin. Their runs were rapidly disappearing from under their accustomed feet; the land which they had held so long, that they had come to look upon it as their" own, was being overrun with the new class which our land legislation had created ; and it was clear unless they made a very strong effort in their own defence, they would shortly be almost entirely deprived of their sources of wealth. So they took to dummyism, and carried out the game very successfully for themselves, Now the new class is beginning to find itself " cribbed, cabined, and confined." Three hundred and twenty acres is pronounced an by the class not to be enough for a farm. The settler must have double tuat area, and would not have too much, so he says, if he could select to the extent of a thousand acres or upwards. But at present 320 acres ia his outside limit, and so, for fear the neighboring lands should be all taken up before auy alteration in the law can be made, the class has taken to dummyism. Also, it is without question that other people — wealthy people, languishing of earth hunger, who know how to cook a land job to a turn — have taken to dummyism and these people, as everyone knows, who knows anything about the matter, are not squattsrs. Now, if the late regulations are carefully studied, it must strike the reader that the department had had it eyes on these people, as well as on the squatters. And if anyone in the face of them, should contemplate dummyisLn, we would strongly commend to his perusal, the fourth schedule of the said regulations. By that, au ordeal will be prepared for the party applying for a lease or Crown grant, which will pretty thoroughly test his integrity. One rei suit of the issue of the regulations baa ! been the stoppage, to a great extent, of the selection lately so " rampant '* in the Wimmera district. And that schedule will be the death of dummyism everywhere. A selector, in applying for a lease or grant, must be prepared to swear that he has not at any time, wholly or partly assigned or sub-let, or wholly or partly transferred ! his interest in his allotment ; that within two years from the time of hia obtaining bis license, he enclosed his allotment with a good and substantial fence, and cultivated one acre out of ten during that time ; that he has resided for at least two years and a half " in his own proper person " on the allotment, and that before the end of the third year of occupation he made " permanent and substantial improvements '* on the allotment to the value of one pound for every acre. The list of improvements required are set forth in the schedule. Then he will have to show what are the exact im* provements be has made ; the character and extent of his fencing, of his cultivation, his buildings, his works for water storeage, and all other improve* ments, must be proved to the satisfaction of the department. After that, he will be subjected to a catechism, which every selector will do well to got by heart ; and he will find it, if he has not yet found it, at the end of Schedule Pour, aforesaid.

Woman's devotion (says the writer of " Under the Verandah," in the Melbourne " Leader ") is not confined to civilized lands, of which the secret official records of the Fijian Kingdom would afford a proof. The man Clancy, lately sentenced to death at Sydney for the part he took in the Carl massacre* had, before he was captured by the Cossack, been united in the bonds of matrimony with a dusky subject of King Cakobau. On Clancybeing arrested, his bride determined to save the man of her choice, and reaching the Cossack in the middle of the night, got stealthily on board, and managed to release her *husband from the custody of his guards. G-ently he was let into the water, and the woman following, the pair gained the canoe, and Clancy was rowed to the shore> and concealed in the bush with such success as to defy all the efforts of the crew of the Cossack to find him. Application was at last made to the Fijian Government for the aid of native trackers, and the request being complied with, Clancy was again discovered and again made a prisoner. Civilization, by the aid of savage skill, triumphed, and rendered the heroic efforts of a devoted woman futile. At a soiree the other day one gentleman pointed out a dandified-looking individual to his friend as a sculptor. ''What, 3*3 * Said hi 3 friead, " such a looking-chap as that a sculptor ! Surely you must be mistaken." "He may not be the kind of one you mean," said tie informant, "btt% I know that he chiselled * taaler nob of a auit of clothes test weekJ*