THE HON. MR RICHARDSON ON SMALL FARMS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 249, 27 August 1879, Page 2

THE HON. MR RICHARDSON ON SMALL FARMS.

What I was going to say about small farms is thin, that we have had practical experience of the folly of this, There has been a great struggle when men first came here to get small farms, and what has been the result 1 Why, that in nine cases out of ten the farmers have come to i»rief. They have tried the system in Auckland, I knowmyselfjfromhavingseentheni. There they have given them up to military settlers, almost for nothing. I have seen magnificent land given thus, almost, a3l have said, given them, and what has been the result 1 Why, that men have starved on them, and I know of my own knowledge, that these very .farms, sold, as I state, upon deferred payments, almost amounting to giving the land away, were sold at an average of £5 for fifty acres of good land—l may say beautiful land. (Cheers.) It has been the same in Victoria, where land was given for aimost nothing, and those who took to small farms were obliged to give them up, What has been the result, I ask you, in these cases to the men hiking up these small farms'! Why, absolute starvation, They were unable to make anything out of them. (Cheers.) Don't you run away with the idea of small farms, Get large ones, out of which you can get something to exist upon. Get the Government to declare larf e tracts of land open for sale upon deferred payments, and get farms such as you can exist and live upon, and not little trumpery farms of thirty or forty acres. No man can live,upon them. (Cheers,)