The Wairarapa Daily MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1891.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3888, 17 August 1891, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily MONDAY, AUGUST 17, 1891.

The 80-called " land sale " recently ! held in Wellington, is designated by our local contemporary as "a scramble," but it is something more p than this. The Land Board Office is the Monte Carlo of the Liberal party, the grand lottery where the Liberal speculator is periodically at work drawing for prizes. Sections are won there which are worth considerably more than the upset price, and even , impecunious persons can afford to speculate in them, as very little cash is required. Of course the men who are wont to attend these lotteries do not apply for sections with the idea of , holding them. They simply try for them because they know that if they draw a lusky number they can sell them again at a big profit. A prominent Liberal m this district boasted the ■ other day of having made as much as £SOO out of the sale of s section which he secured, and was, of course, prepared to go in for another on the same i lines. The rank and file of the attendants at the so-called land sales are simply land gamblers who understand the run of the ropes, who know how to get bold of sections, and who are adepts in the art of land transfer. One would think that Ministers, seeing this scandalous speculation going on and knowing all about it, would be anxious to put a stop to this Monte Carlo land lottery, but possibly they cannot do so without giving offence to many of their prominent supporters, and certainly the Postmaster-General could not afford to throw the first stone. We hear much about old time iniquities, when men added field to field and section to section, but these land monopolists did not buy land for speculation, but for occupation and improvement. The large holdings in the earlier days of the colony were in the best interests of settlement, and the men who owned them were for the most part settlers of the very best type. They were land grabbers no doubt, but not far speculative purposes. They bought their runs iu the open market at fair prices, and in most instances they have made them yield all the produce that was obtainable from them. But the swarm of Liberal locusts which now battens on the lands of the colony is distinctly mischievous for the men who want land for homesteads are thrust on one side by speculators and have to purchase sections second-hand at inflated prices. A roaring traffic has existed for some years past in bush sections. Hundreds, if not thousands of people I have secured land for speculative purposes and the game still goes on. If Ministers turned their attention to this gambling for small sections instead of trying to burst up big holdings they would confer a distinct benefit on the community. It is not land monopoly but land speculation which is injurious to genuine settle meut.