LAND BILL CAMPAIGN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1985, 22 January 1907, Page 4

LAND BILL CAMPAIGN.

REPLY TO MR M'NAB. Dealing with Mr MeNab’s speech oji the Land Bill, Mr C. Lewis, M.H.R., in the course of an interview accorded to a Press representative, said:—“Putting on one side too details, technicalities, and what I regard as mere flummery, Mr MoNafi ignored what to me is most important in fact the only feature of the Bill, This Parliament, lot the next do what it may, can never consent while ten men can stand upon their legs to the flagrant, deliberate, and unblushing breach of faith contained in the only clause I am concerned with, the clause which blots the word ‘freehold’ out of the public dictionary. There it is, plain and undeniable. The electors were asked to confirm a principle which this Bill brazenly violates, and I for one say the electors shajl be consulted before that is done. Tho discussion upon the report of the Land Commission took placo immediately before the general elections, and members, and particularly Ministers, went to the country upon the policy then enunciated, the maintenance of the optional system in connection with Crown lands. If there is any meaning in words the country was asked to support this system. No sooner does this Ministry" take office than each of these three systems is to bo destroyed. Is this reasonably honest? If elections have any significance the country supported the optional system, and it is to” the country, and not. for a Parliament so elected, to reverse that verdict. This Parliament will not do so-; it is too serious an issue. It is ail very well to say it is only a matter of sentiment. Sentiment is not a thing to be sneered at; it is just, this very" freehold sentiment that has pushed Englishmen into every known cjuarter of the globe, that colonised New Zealand, and brought our fathers here, including, I doubt not, Mr McNab’s. It is not a thing to be discouraged. Tho theory that we dont want to injure any man,” concluded Mr Lewis, “is not insisted upon nowadays. Men have been deprived of land for less than the capitalised valuo of what they were making from it, and you have the dictum of the Chief Justice that the price to be given is to be determined by what a tenant can pay, rather than by what an owner is making. All this represents a tendency which has been quickly asquiesced in by many who regard themselves as outside the danger zone. Tho area of that zone is increasing rapidly, and tin's Bill adds very largely to its extent.”