ENDOWMENTS AND FREEHOLD.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8473, 26 June 1907, Page 5

ENDOWMENTS AND FREEHOLD.

The division into three separate Bills of the Government's land proposals creates an interesting position so far as the freeholders in Parliament are concerned. Numbers of members have arrived in Wellington during the last few days, and a Post reporter made it his business, yesterday, to question some of them on their attitude towards the Government's proposals in the light of the recent announcement made by the Minister for Lands. One gentleman who has never waivered in his advocacy of the freehold, declared, without equivocation, that he was certainly in favour of endowments for education, hospitals, and old-age pensions. He likewise believed in limitation and all the freehold he required would be provided by the bursting up of large estates and the settlement of native lands on the lines proposed by the Government. "If ever this country has the ill-fortune to fall on bad times," he said, "we will bless the day we set aside endowments for the maintenance of three of the greatest departments of State." Yet another freeholder, and one of the staunchest in Parliament, said he was in favour of endowments "reasonable endowments." "I can quote you,-" he said, "from a speech of the late Mr Rblleston in which the setting aside of half a million acres of Crown lands as endowments was advocated. I am prepared to agree to such a scheme, and will support a policy framed on those lines, but I will most assuredly object to the setting aside of all the remaining Crown lands, as endowments. Such wholesale reservation is not required. We can yery well agree with a great deal 'less.