The Wairarapa Daily. MONDAY, MAY 16, 1887. NEW LAND CRAZES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2599, 16 May 1887, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. MONDAY, MAY 16, 1887. NEW LAND CRAZES.

The Adelaide Observer, discussing Mr Ballanco's land acquisition project, declares tho project which ho has endeavored to work out to be still unsolved. In South Australia, politicians have sown a few political wild oats in trying to put people on land, with tho unfortunate result that hundreds of thousands of acres which have been' mapped out into small homesteads and allocated to small settlers have been quietly but surely absorbed into large holdings. After a careful review of our Land Acquisition Bill, the Adelaide Observer concludes its article by declaring that " the proposed; associations will probably be worked for speculative purposes by men who intend to sublet or to sell leaseholds at a premium. Indeed, objections to the scheme seem to present themselves on every si'do. The perfect system, as'wo have said, has not yet been discovered; and certainly SirEobert-rSto'ut has not solved the unw'orked problem." There are plenty of radicals in Australia, but they are riot mad enough to adopt the schemes which are being initiated by the present Ministry in New Zealand. Mr ;Bflfflft»GO J}ob a- commendable horror ■of big speculators, but wo ques-. tion whether the swarm pf small speculators whom ho has called into existence by his land legislation are not more dangerous than the men against whom he sets his face, Of the big speculators in this colony, it may bo said that they had money to lose, and we fancy very many have lost it, and are entitled to some measure of sympathy on that score; but the peculiarity of the little speculators introduced in our settlements, or as a Magistrate called them theotherday "pauper-settlements;" i& that the speculators have nothing to lose. As in all speculations there is a losing as well as a winning side, and as the former is the more common' in this colony, the question .arises as to who will suffer the loss. It will most undoubtedly fall upon the colony, and in the aggregate it will prove a heavy bar • don. If ever the State in. New Zealand beconW a sort of universal landlord, thebusiness it will undertake wutprove anything but profitable. There are, methods by which even' the State, .yith a hopelessly .unsatisfactory tenaiv

try, could get put of its difficulties. It could mortgage its ; tenants; by;.the thousand to", outside; capitalists and hand the small settlers of New Zealand as bondsmen, to London financiers, but probably the experiences of South Australia' would be vrepeated here. 'When small settlers are 'starved off tbeirdand and the Government require money, their'.sections- : \vill pas 3 into the'hands of large holders.; Men with money will only have to' bide their time to get..land ■bargains at the cost ;of unsuccessful small settlers. •■■