Correspondence.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 353, 6 May 1874, Page 3

Correspondence.

THE LAND QUESTION (To the Editor .)

Sift,— Among the stock subjects sure to come up for discussion during the present session of the Provincial- Council, the land question will probably assume its usual prominence, and a variety of proposals to tinker the existing Act will no doubt be submitted ; some of them with the honest intention of remedying its defects, but, in the majority of instances/it is to be feared spacious and impracticable amendments will be knowingly brought forward for the consideration of the Council just in order to gain time, while the lands of the country are for ever passing from their control into the hands of strangers and foreigners, many of whom have never seen their possessions. This has been the experience of the past. It will be curious to observe if, learning wisdom from that experience, the present Council will eschew the wranglings which have made their meetings hitherto somewhat notorious, and unite in giving full effect to what is undoubtedly the best land law ever enacted by » New Zealand legislature— viz., the Act of 1872. That the Act has not been fairly put into operation is what is mainly complained of, and of course one has only to point to the limit of 30,000 acres annually permitted to be thrown open to prove the justice of this complaint. Of this extent probably not more than one-half can be profitably token up, the remainder being generally rocky and poor in quality, so that we have in reality only a paltry 15,000 acres suitable for agriculture made annually available in Otago for settlers of small means. There is one portion of the Act that obviously requires amendment, that is the absurd provision requiring personal application at the (in many cases) inconveniently situated land offices, and tni» may be best illustrated by < relating the case of an applicant for some land recently thrown open under the deferred payment system. The intending applicant travelled from the vicinity of Dunedin and made application for 200 ' acres. Other applications weiy made for portions of the same land, and, as usual in such cases, it was decided to ballot for possession of these sections a fortnight later, when if the would-be selector did not appoint an agent to represent him, he would again have to appear personally. After being subjected to all this anxiety and worry, the intending settler in this instance found he had only his trouble for his pains ; the sections fell to the lot of more fortunate individuals, and he had the satisfaction of reflecting that in order to comply with redtape regulation he was minus some £15 or £16 in travelling aud other expenses, when the whole transaction might be equally well accomplished by the expenditure of a twopenny postage stamp. This unfortunate might well be pardoned if, with a certain grim jocularity, he nicknamed the deferred payment system the "hope deferred system." It has been so in the experience of many, solely, as I believe, on account of the totally inadequate extent of land made available. Witness the most recent instance at M'Nab's, when 99 applications were lodged for 25 sections, many besides refraining in disgust when they saw how small their chances were. I will give another instance of theinoperativeness of the Act. On a run when more than the prescribed area has been taken up in tho block already thrown open to entitle the residents to a new .block, the Government has persistently turned a deaf ear to their request. The worn-out cry about its being "unsuitable " was quickly disposed of by men on the spot giving a written undertaking that they should occupy 2,600 acres immediately on the desired block being thrown open. At the risk of being tedious, I will give yet another illustration of how the land laws are administered. A few- years ago, six or seven miners, with their families, took up and planted with trees and otherwise improved an acre or so over what they were entitled to hold under their miners' rights. The land so taken up was not good land — was in fact decidedly inferior ; but what with incessant labor Mid the construction of races for irrigation purposes, they managed to make smiling homesteads for themselves. In the course of time they naturally desired to acquire the freehold of the couple of acres or so each had made so valuable with his own hard toil. After an infinite deal of trouble and months of delay, they got their applications duly presented to the Waste Lands Board, which sapient body solemnly decided that the land being of special value must be charged £3 per acre, making, together with survey fees and other costs, from £5 to £8 per acre those poor people had to pay. Thousands of acres of land adjacent of a much more valuable nature were sold privately to the runholder for something like 15s. an acre. These are no solitary instances, and go far to justify the grumbling assertions so frequently heard that in Otago there is one land law for the rich and another for the poor. With your permission, I shall continue this subject in your next issue. — I am, &©., AjmJCS.