Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1895. THE WASTE LANDS BOARD.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4916, 3 January 1895, Page 2

Wairarapa Daily Times. [Established 1874.] THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1895. THE WASTE LANDS BOARD.

'The next meeting of the Waste Lands Board, which falls due on the 21st, will be an interesting one. On i that occasion the fate of the MasNorton Reform Special Settlers will j he again in the balance. Will settlers i surrender their lands, or will their ! sections be forfeited, or will the Hon. John and his henchman, Commissioner Baker, give way ? These : settlers might be almost called the Defiance Set tiers, They cannot pay ; Mr Commissioner Baker's bill, but ; they won't surrender and will die \ off their sections first, Then comes j the question whether their sections will be forfeited for non-compliance i with the terms of the Act. It is an I open secret {hat the Minister of i Lands has put his foot down and will not give way to the demand'made upon him by the settlers; in fact he definitely refused to entertain it some time back, Although, on tho surface the light seems to be between tho settlers, and Mr Commissioner Baker, it is really one between the sutlers and the .Minister of Lands, Mr Baker is autocratic in his own department, but in this he is only the reflex of his Ministerial chief. The main difficulty in the way of tho settlers sections being forfeited appears to be that one or two legal opiuions have been taken as to the validity of the claim which has been made by tho Commissioner on the settlers, and these opinions have been unfavourable to tho department. Apparently the Lands Department is administered in such a manner that the will and pleasure of the Hon. John McKenzie is more thought of than the letterof the law. If their bo flaws in the position taken up by the Government it will bo some time beforo we shall hear the last of the matter. Mr Commissioner Baker, with presumably the Minister at his back, has tackled a somewhat ugly customer in treading on the tail of the coat of the Member for Mastei'ton. It is a case of" pull devil, pull Baker." All parties to the affair appear to be somewhat in the wrong, but the dispute promises to be an object lesson in land settlement and will go a great way towards educating the public as to the peculiar and superficial character of settlement effected by the present Ministry. Tho Bottlers won't givo way because they have faith in Mr Hogg, and Mr Commissioner Baker won't give way because he has faith in Mr John McKenzie. Mr John McKenzie won't give way because he cannot conceive anything to be wrong that is done in his Department, and is quite unaware that it is the most dilatory, unsatisfactory, and incapable of all the various departments of the Government, ;