CORRESPONDENCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5123, 6 September 1895, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

which precludes them from making a living out of it ? Is it right that after working for years on their sections ami spending all their money -all their hard-earned savings • and all they can borrow ; to be. obliged to go in the country to look for work ? Is it right that thousands of selectors of Crown Lands should he compelled to look for work and compete with the working-meu ? Insteadof being profitably employed, and finding employment foi working men on their sections, as they undoubtedly would be doing if they got the laud at a reasonable price ; say 5s per acre, Is it right that our Land Boardsshould increase, instead, of lighten, the burden of our staple ] industry ; and throw men on the j labour market that should be em- j idoyers ? Is it right that they j should sell Crown Lands without apprizing the intending selectors of the fact that they wero already encumbered with a heavy special rate for the construction of roads in other districts ? Is this method of disposing of Crown Lands a wise, a prudent, or a justifiable policy ? He that takes up a section in the Awarua Block at the upset price, whether the system be Government rack-rent, or freehold, is only slaving to fatten the Lands Department, or the usurer. If all time were before us—or even the lifetime Methuselah is reputed to have had—instead of only a span, and a very short span at that, we would not object to the price. But with our short life the price is extortionate.

If any person will take a retrospect for twenty or thirty years, he will find that our forbears, who got the pick of the land for five and ten shillings per acre; and got from £lO to £2O per head for fat bullocks, and from £1 to £llos for fat wethers, invariably have at the present day from £3 to £(i per acre mortgage on their properties; and would liko to know what amount of mortgage we will havo in twenty years hence when we have to pay £llos and £2 10s per acre for high, mountainous, forest land- 1 maintain that cheap land is. the fundamental, the essential, and the vital part of prosperous land settlement,and all Crown Lands should be valued from a using, or producing standard of valuation. Ifo other Government, except Turkey, desires a race of pauper farmers, or rack-rented Crown tenants. No other Government, but Turkey, would refuse to listen to its rackrented tenants when they appeal to it for a reduction of rent,' No other Government, except Turkey, would demand from six to ten times the real valuo of its lands; and expect its tenants to go in for penal servitude, live on potatoes, renounce themselves and discard the nature of mau, and sink to the level of a packhorse or a working bullock for the remainder of their days.

In conclusion, I would like to tell the Cpramissipnei' and members of the Wellington Land Board, that, ii' i if they were to go into some of these back, roadless settlements, and hear impious execrations poured on their heads, and hear the most reckless and scorching blasphemy in which they and tlieir lands were tlonounced, coupled with the sight of poor draggled, sore-backed packhorses, staggering under heavy loads in three or four feet of mud, and dying in scores on the way—then'tlioymighi soften their'obdurate hearts, and'let people have biisli lands'on Buch terras as will enable |them to acquire roads and bridges' to ihoil* holdings, and live in a style becoming to civilised human beingsi Apologising for trespassing so much on your valuable space, to tlie grasping avarice of the Wellington'Lind B,oard, I subscribe myself, A Victim, •