Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878] MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1893.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4349, 20 February 1893, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878]

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1893.

Being the extended title of the Waiiukai'a Daily, with which it is identical

A liberal who for Bonio time past, has been endeavouring to sell a large estate, sub-divided into smallholdings, to prospective farmers,-informs us that he cannot dispose of his sections owing to the determined manner in which the Government monopolise the land market. The policy of the Government being to break up largo holdings, it seems strange that in their deahugs with land they should place obstacles in the way of putting subdivisions of large estates in the market, Virtually Ministers say to a largo landowner we will tax yon until you break up your estate and when you do break it up we will run you 60 that you cannot sell a single section of it at a fair price. How oan a private owner who desires to place his property in the market compete with the Government? His land is handicapped with a direot tax, the Government land is free, his land must be sold on some kind of cash basis, the Government put theirs in the market without even demanding a deposit, If the Government had an unlimited area of good laud they could strangle all privato enterprise throughout the Colony, as it is they simply disturb and disarrange it, It is to the interest of every colouist in New Zealandthatlandedestate should have a fixed value, and when the Government, with their fanoiful legislation, depress such values, they do a serious injury. Under the new order of things, land will not fetch a fair value in any part of tho Colony. The direct tax upon it reduces its capital value. At no time in the history of tho Colony was there so muoh land in the market as at present; and the moaning of this is that tbo Government are taxing men off their pror perties, and land is becoming a drug in tbe market, Of oourse, as yet, only the larger properties have been weighted by the cumulative tax, the bigger owners only are being burst up; bat the Trades aod Labour Counoil who, to a large extent, compel the course of Government Legislation, aro calling upon Ministers to extend the oporation of the burstiug«up tax. The forward march of confiscation and robbery is to be mado a test question for the coming General Election. It is a grave calamity that puhlio confidence in land values should have been destroyed by the" ruh-a-macK" land policy of a Liberal Government; or that the Government should be.able to boast of the revenue they have sweated out pf the land, '