SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 5, 1894. OUR VIRTUOUS LAND BOARD.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4817, 5 September 1894, Page 2

SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 5, 1894. OUR VIRTUOUS LAND BOARD.

Oun virtuous Land Boavd lias found tlwt Mrs Sharman has committed a technical breach of tlio Act and has forfeited her section. In the ease of Mrs Amotit would, if it could-but it could not—do the same, so that in this instance it has failed. It is curious to notice technical breaches of the Land Act, committed day after day and our virtuous Laud Board winking the other eye because the culprits are men of the right colour, but if a technical breach of the Act be committed by a person of the wrong colour, oh, then the Board iff a lion roused! It engages lawyers and spies, calls a host of witnesses and pours forth money like water to punish tho erring 0110. We have heard of men boasting in this district that they can do what they like with the virtuous Land Board, and advising their friends to speculate in sections. " Yon need not," they say, " make any improvements, but sell out at a profit and start again with a fresh section." Our virtuous Land Board knows thattechnical breaches of the Act are as plentiful as blackberries, but it is understood that in certain cases they raustnotbespoken of. There are dummy settlors of two kinds under the thumb of our virtuous Land Board. There is first tlio real dummy sutler, who never spends a sixpence on his Ja»d .and never goes near it, the settler jvhfl is never worried by spies or harried by prosecutions, but who is spoken of in glowing and laudatory terms in Ministerial reports. This is the settler, who tramples on the Act and cares not one jot for its provisions. It is on this settler that Government favours fall, for does ho not black Scddon's boots, aud (Jo obeisance to MoKenzie. Then secondly there is tlio dummy settler who employs labour and spends money onlier land. She fells bush, erects fences, sows grass, and docs her duty by the soil, but before a shilling can be earned in return for her outlay, the Government spy comes along, reports a technical breach of the Act, and five hundred pounds worth of improvements are confiscated. And this is the way in which real settlement is killed and sham settlement encouraged by the political humbugs who rule the roost, and Has it why bushfeUing contracts are a thing of the past and the working man has no winter mploymnt, Wo do not blame Mr Commissioner Baker or any nominee of the Government who sits at the virtuous Waste Land Board. They are the tools of an unscrupulous Ministry which, has to make a sham system of settlement ' appear to be a real one, which has to be continually I {throwing dust in the eyes of the people, ifld tlsy d(ire npt call ( their their owii. j Then again 'the spy business ; is ; a special ,ow yirMSus , Land' Bijardi' A pjausiftje jcomes up from Wellington and says

he Avants to buy land and thinks that a ' section in the Puketois will suit ■ him; ■ and -while negotiating a bargain gets a considerable. • amouiit of private and detailed information. When he has obtained this the bogus land buyer disappears and turns .up at the Land Office as a spy in the employ of the Government. We would like to know how many spies are regularly employed, by the State and whether they are paid by results ie, according to their capacity for lyinof. Our virtuous Land Board no doubt pays well for immoral services of this kind, and the public, no doubt, has overy confidence in an inquiry which is baaed on the evidence of a paid spy andahirodperverterof the truth. Still, the Wasto Lands Board is only a jobbing office in the department of the Minister for Lauds, and if it ventured to show any disinclination for dirty work it would bo brought up with a round turn by its real controller and master,