ENDOWMENT LANDS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10692, 13 August 1912, Page 4

ENDOWMENT LANDS.

The Wellington Post derives satisfaction from the announcement that the Government "does not intend to interfere with endowment lands." We regret exceedingly that wo cannot ourselves find the slightest room for satisfaction in the announcement. We look at the question mi a broad, public light. We ask, in all sincerity, if it is right for the Crown to part with the fee simple of Land for Settle-

Mont estate, why should it be wrong to dispose of the endowment lands? After all, the only question involved is one of principle. If the principle >f the State ownership of land is "•''t in respect of one portion of the public estate, it is right in respect to all others. If it is wrong—as we maintain it to be—in one case, it is equally wrong in the other. The question of what the proceeds of the land are to he devoted to is neither here nor there. Primarily the State must lind the wherewithal to maintain the whole of its services from the soil and th e products of the soil. If tbig be so, what nutters it whether the revenue be derived by way of rent or direct taxation? We are, ourselves, sticklers for the principle of diiect taxation, provided everybody, whetner on or off the land, bears his equal shire. ~