Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1893. OUR LAND LAWS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4433, 1 June 1893, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878.] THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1893. OUR LAND LAWS.

Most people, who diacues our present Land Act, seem to have never grasped the (act that it is merely an Act to regulate the sale of Grown Lands. If they once dearly understood that, they would be by way of seeing that no Act iraß wanted. There would (in ' the absence of an Aot) be nothing to profent the Grown selliog its lands, and there are dozens of real estate agents who would do the,-job in a straightforward way. What is the matter with the way the WellingtonManawatu Railway Company sold their land ? Was anyone robbed ? Did some wicked "land-grabber" " mop it all up" ? Havo the, buyers or those of them who bought " on terms "been ruined? The Company bad a vast estate, and they simply ' went and sold it without afty fuss, Their method was, if yon like, admirable. But it was no more so than the method of any man who sells a large parcel of tea or sugar. It was obvious. They made enquiries as to the sizes of sections that would sell best, and were told, wo believe, that sections of -200 to 600 acres fetch moat money. So, exactly as a cheese factory makes oheeses of the weight, ( most in demand, did the Company, lay, out roads that would afford access to I sections of that size, and then cut off the sections. Then tbey auctioned ( them, with one consolation only, j Suppose a purchaser agreed ljo give 1 £I,OOO for a section. He had to pay, 1 if we remember rightly, ten per cent. 1 down,' the £9OO remaining on mort* f gage, and this was to be reduced by 1 £IOO a-year- for two years; or, if the 5 purchaser liked, he could spend this j

money on the land, thug increasing the value of the soourity, and let the £9OO remain, But put Government could not, apparently, trust themselvea with such a simple matter, They must have an elaborate apparatus of Laud Boards, to begin with. Their function seems to bo chiefly to meddle with the Commissioners, Their functions, as sot' out in the Aot, they. have never attempted to discharge,' because they have no sources of revenue, and consequently oannot employ officers or carry out any policy. Contrast a Land Board with an Education Board. The latter body has a large iocome, a policy of some sort, and officers to carry it out, And also, as the Commissioners of Crown Lands are appointed and dismissed by the Government, and the members of the Eoard are in exactly the same position, it would be quite absurd to expect their policy, if they bad one, to be of a permanent kind. Now as to the Act wbioh the Land Boards nominally administer, the great feature of it is that' Crown Lands are sold below their market value. This is to" give a poor man a oliance," Gf course the real effoot is just the opposite, If any be so simple as to deny that they are sold below their market value, we refer him to the history of tko Pahiatua County. Nearly the whole of it was sold below (he yalue, and this was notorious. As to tbo "giving a poor man a ohance," it is quite clear that while in appearance it is liberal, in actual effect the "poor man " is humbugged. His natural instinct is to go in bald headed for as muoh laud as he can pay a deposit on, Let any reader ask himself ho® he would aot if a generous grocer announced his intention of selling. 10,000 bags of sugar at 2s Gd per bag. Terms, Id a bag down, and tho' rest on liberal terms." We can risk a shrewd guess that even if our aforesaid "reader" had plenty of sugar at home he would put his name down for as many bags as he had pence. Foreseeing similar action on the part .of land buyers, the Government of the time inserted any number of incomprehensible clauses, Applications to purchase must be accompanied by solemu declarations that the buyer wanted the land for himself, that be had not already got more than a certain area, elo. He was also to do certain improvements, to reside on the land, and not transfer it without permission, Worst of all, the sections were to be ballotfd for, This appeal to our gambling instincts was irresistible. Every time a batch of sections were gazetted, all sorts of wiros) were pulled, Relying on the flimsiest information, men who knew nothing* of laud rushed for it. They argued very logically that it was offered below its value, they could not lose on it. And few ever did. It is too well known to require proof,- that hundreds of those who drew lucky numbers in the ballot immediately set to work to sell out at a profit and almost without exception succeeded. But all this completely shut out the" poor man " whom the Goyernment.wished to.befriend. He had no time to inspect' block after block, only to find that there were scores of applicants for every section and that his ohance of getting one was infinitesimal, He would a thousand times rather have attended an auction sale, and been allowed to bid what in his judgment the land was worth to him, Here his experience would have enabled him very soon to owner of a section he could work profitably. Instead of that, his best course now is to wait till the land is sold, and then buy a section second hand, whereby he certainly loses nothing, but the Government lose all the monoy that he pays for the original purchaser's interest. It may bo said by Borne that at any rate the people who drew sectious at the ballot made money, The philosopher (if such an one should read our humble screed) will have already guessed that taking the affair all round they did not I There was so muoh trouble and uncertainty about it, such a lot of time wasted making ingenious plans to drive a coaoh and four through the Act, such a bother about the transfer, tbat taking the applicants all round, successful and unsuccessful, those who did make money only made about what the others wasted in fruitless applications, What the colony really wants is (1) no Land Act at all, (2) a dear policy with regard to Native Lands, (3) a proper map of the colony, shewing (among other things) what legal roads exist and their precise boundaries, We hope to return anon to (2) and (3), not with a draft bill in our pookot, for to prepare this it would be necessary to have the run of all de» partmental information, and spend months over it, but merely to point out the urgency of the case, and the feasibility of what we want,