The Waikato Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 24,1878.

Waikato Times, Volume XI, Issue 873, 24 January 1878, Page 2

The Waikato Times.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1878.

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatever state or persuasion, religious or p'olitioal. ♦ * * -» ♦ Here shall the Press the People's right maintain, Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain.

There wan no BUi>j>>ot brought forward for discussion m the Assembly , last session of more general iinpor tance than the Land question, and no one debate up n tbe Lnd B more >renen» liy i o ten sting than tl i * t which is to be found m the «wewyecond volume of 'Huisar.i,' which conttinn an aniru tet dissuasion upon the value of the ttfc systems, Free ieiec ion and J$;«l alter survey, r.lu for Her m vojjpe m Ciiaterbitrv, the latter m Oia^j . The advocates of ether system bring tor ward facts and figured to idvanee their cau.se, but a nispastrio ia(e weighing* of. t)ie evidence *ould go to prove 'hat the Canterbury symem is th R Wetter of tbe two. Tbo test of any land system m the degree m which it promotes settle■uen'. and true colonisation The i'tsuir. is af-er all the real crucial test to apply, and the result v dwi ediy m favour of Canterbury. The great argument used against free selection is f.hat it pia.j b into the hands of >he speculator and capitalist and m more costly m the after surveys, but it was shown from indisputable facts on the other hand iiai the Otag:in system did not tfttisly tue bom* fide requirement a of o' woul -be selttiers. 'The fact is thai no one land sale system which hah yet been introduced b t. is fault, and open to improvement. And, aureover, what is a plicable to one i? asn oi lands und one part of thr c>;on uiaj very easily ne found inapplicable to another The debate elei red to, showing up the merit* I .«ii(J demeii a f either sys ; em, will at le tst piace our legislators generally au fait 011 ihe -uiject when it again joiUt-H torwttidfti consideration, and hat at no did aiit date, for an >iiieiuied Laid B ll we imagine will >t) v catdiiiai point m the policy of he present Government if it con•iinc iv po^er. A large part, of the pu lv- esi-s.t.r has doubtless been iaviKhe*i away by injadioioa-' and oa ia.ul. . laws, btr. there jm enough •et( to make a wi»e adntinistratiou ot the public land* tbe most important queritiou j>et m colonial ieeislation. . » might bave been expected the ;-yB em of s.-»le ot land on deferred payments, which forms an important feaiuro m the L-ind A-t o= 1877 comes m for no inconsiderable amount of attention, aid what is fta«J ot it ts ciiiefiy m its favour. Mr -B^s Uiß, a rueinl'e.r of a iSoa'hern Waste L«nd> Bo«rd bears stroncr eviderce m its f:»vor ag-inat the chitr XtK t- tiat it ucted i juvi.msly iowanls tie o der settlers keeping up the jirioe ot Jahor. I say that the deferr«»d payment system, so far as Otago is concerned, so far as I know — and I have had an opportunity of knowing its effects better than almost any man m the country, as I have been con-tinually-travelling among the people^hau been an unqualified success. I can "take any hon. member to a district where, four years ago, you could ride for forty miles and you would see nothing but sheep grazing on the land, and where you can now stand on an eminence and see seventy or eighty houses, with the plough confrHnb' going 4iU3fl£ tfcfi 9sfi£P B } the lfifid

fenced m, and large staoks of hay, corn and wheat on the lSnd. The system has been an unqualified success. In proof of this, I would say that there was a block of 20,000 acrea thrown open on the deferred-payment system, and I see by the ' Daily Times,' of the sth September, there were 12,000. applications put m for thislaM:';'! ■ ' ' : . •■' B, stem of free selec ion , wjffe deri;iuiiced ; by many memr bek $0 nota/bl) by, Messrs J'>yce*;and "tout. The latter ( quoted from offlcml documents to show how under tliia system the .tu_n.,. holder and the capital st were enabled to perform -tho rtspnctivH operations of * spotting' and 'gridiro.iing' by which the smull freeholder is kept out. of the tiVld. Our reailors must hi ar m mind that a twenty acre section is the ama lest section that can be se-ected. Mr 6tout quotes from an official doju ment the writer of which B.ys: — I am now principally referring to the plan known by the name of " spotting," where sections, ore scattered m such a. manner as to render the intervening spaces uaelss to anyone but the purohaser. There are two principal methods of attaining the same oojeot. The one is simple, and, so far as I cau judge, quits within the letter, though -not within the inten-. tionß of the regulations. The^ purchaser desires to 'secure a large block 'ot labd, say iOOO acres. He effects it by Hying' a series of sections, amounting 'in all to something over 600 acres. He takes a number of twenty^ acre sections on a particular frontage, omitting between each section a sufficient length of frontage to leave unpurchaaed, say, eighteen acres. This eighteen acres can, under regulation 35, only be purchased at auction. It would be only a man of small means who would be likely to put- this up to auction, and it is therefore pretty safe to fall into. i the hands of the capitalist. The protsess of • gridirouiug' practised by the Canterbury rui. holder, ad capitalist is thus des cribed m the rep-ii* for 1677 of theSurreyor.General quoted oy Mi 5s tout. - . Some of the snaps shown to me exhibit a medley of intricacies, the unravelling of iwhich will call for the services of the most persevering and. talented officers. These operations go under the local name " gridironing" : that ie, a licensee applies,, for twenty acres m many different parts, always leaving eighteen or nineteen acres interval. 'He thus secures close on double the country that he cares about purchasing, and the interval* he runs little risk of '"losing, as these, by the law, must be put up to auction. 'Spoking' the same authority goes on to describe m. 'much thisame terms as the precadiiig-autho-rity quo.cd, and graphically remarks. ' I This process would be best described by supposing that the gridiron itself had been broken up into a hundred pieces, the bits strewed at random upon the ground ; then you would see what would appear to be amasaof quadrilaterals utterly without design; yet the design is found to be most efficacious, when we comprehend the - purpose thereof. But if selection is o,<en uabuse it has on the whole worked well as against the Otugaci system, where the land has first' to \w steeled, then the se-ec ioi approved ny the Waste L*nds Baa'd, then ippoved by the Government, then smve «4 .and ad^efisHd >By the t'ioie all this is done he snU'ctor Imp iirob.tbly lelt for some o her field <v idve.st oent. It was showr by M Pyke, from th<* lust ctmtius i-eturns. tweaking m favour of th«C interhury system of sale, that with a t»oj>akti m of only two thud* that of Otago there , were 117,000 aoiea m;»ie ouder crO; m Canterbury than m Otig->, and that m grain crops Canterbury w»unmistakably the largest produopr , <nhi!e with regard to another point j th»> size und namber of the holding, colonisation had progressed more rapidly m Canterbury than m i Otago. Of bo'dinge from 15 acres •.o 200 acres their were m Ciater-f bury 2928 and m Otago, though the oldest settlement, bat 2,670. 8> that, remarked the speaker, it could not be s»id that the free selection of Crnterbury led to the acquirement •if large estates. The reverse indeed was shown—that as the size of the "holding incre .sed the greater . _th|? proportion of thea*» were to be fonntjl m Orago. Of 350 aore t-» 1000 *ere blocks there were m Otagb 360, m Canterbury 273 ; of blocks from one th'UHand to fire thousand acres, Otago had 158, Canterbry 114. Of holdings from 20,000 to 100,000 there were m Otago 93, m Canterbury 85, and of estates of over 100,000 acres 22 were to be found m Otago and only 15 m Canterbury. Space forbids us on the present ouCHßion t.o refer to the deferred payment system as carried out m < Hago, which came m for its share of comment, while m reference to the difficulties, thrown by_ the equatti* iuterest m its way, reveiations quite equal to the 'spotting* and ' gridironing' processes of the Canterbury run-holder a, were brought to light and exposed.