SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1878.] THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1894. LANDS FOR SETTLEMENT BILL.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4789, 2 August 1894, Page 2

SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1878.] THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1894. LANDS FOR SETTLEMENT BILL.

It is something to be thankful for that five members of the Houso had the courage to vote against the second reading of the Lauds for Settlement Bill, though even this comfort is discounted by the consideration that one of the five opposed it on the ground that the land occupied by settlers already belongs in equity to the people, and favours a more drastic method of resumption. The Bill is undoubtedly popular in much the same way that llobiii Hood, the robber bold, was popular. The idea of taking from the.rich and giving to tho poor is always well received, but in communities where the doctrine is acted upon, there is usually a lack of that mutual confidence which is conducive to prosperity, The old, old, plan of settling land is ten times better than any idea in tho head of the Hon. John McKcnzic. Sell the land as cheaply as it can be sold, say at half the price now charged and let those who are fitted to make a living off it go on it. This plan cannot in practice be beaten, and Ministers, if they followed it, could effect a surprising amount of successful settlement instead of a fabulous extent of unsuccessful settlement, Selling land cheaply for cash, and spending the cash in opening it up by roads, was the secret of the success of the old Provincial Governments, Under the new system of perpetual leases, men do not find out, till they have been on the land for a while, that they have made a bad bargain, and cannot stick to their properties, Things are made easy at first for them but tho difficulties, the inevitable difficulties, come a little later and swamp them. However, the idoas that are popular amongst pcoplo who know • little or nothing about living on land, arc thoso that must carry the day, What the unemployed want is, not land, but work and wages. The nonsense that M.H.R.'s talk about setting them on laud is. nnlimited Mr Collins, M.H.R., for example,' says a man in Now Zealand cannot get a piece of land till he is dead, but if Mr Collins had a fifty aorb section up couutiy giyen to him tomorrow and were ordered to go and live on it and to live by it, we know what would happen, Ho w.ould leave Now Zealand by yihe'firsjt steamer and wo should never see him again. Laud in the swipe of- a section to live on and by, is tk the ordinary M.H.R., like a dose of lEpsom salts,, He won't, swallow the

the prescription himself but is rest lute in thrusting it down the throa of tho unemployed, We, once,, ii our salad days, bought a forty adri section and tried-living on -it clearing itand~fencing.it, ; We sooi came to the conclusion that a busl section was—excepting for peopli specially adapted to it—a place t( live out of and to keep clear of. Ii an ordinary man, unused to arduous labour, and possessing little omc means came to us for advice, wc might recommend him to become a political agitator, or, if lie desired,to live cleanly, to take any honest work ho could get hold of, but we would never recommend him to break his heart by trying to live on land. Men who know how to live on land, and are fitted to settle on it can get as many sections as they-need without a Land for Settlements Bill, and without an eternal punislrmout in the shape of a perpetual lease.