The Ministerial Policy.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 463, 5 June 1890, Page 2

The Ministerial Policy.

The Catholic Times has an able article on the proposal for the Crown to buy up the large area of land now lying waste in the colony. Our contemporary says:— Provided there is a guarantee that the lards will be given to none but bona fide settlers there will he no difficulty in getting the European population to accept the new departure. It will not be so easy to induce the Miori owner to accept paper when he has made up his mind to take cash and spend it on a “spree.” But there can be no doubt that under such circumstances paper will be far better for him. Interest will also be better for him as the annual fruit of a principal that is safely invested, than the opportunity to spend the price of his birthright in one great orgie of debauchery aud riot. Of the resumption of the Queen’s preemptive there are two opinions ; but the balance of experience lies in its favour. The working will, however, have to be watched with the greatest closeness. Whether the Government is seriously going to attack the great estates that stop settlement remains to be seen. That they do stop settlement is a lamentable fact. That they are a curse to the country and a greater curse to their owners in many cases is another melancholy fact. There ought to be hundreds of thousands of industrious settlers and tens of thousands of smiling homesteads, where the sheep strives with the rabbit for a living, and a shepherd in neatly pitched garments riding a sorry hack is the sole sign for miles of human life, and a despondent collie tied up to a fence, and acting as boundary keeper across the open roadway, represents the employment of labour. These great pro perties represent the great mistake of the earlier administrations of New Zealand. In some cases they are the unholy fruit oi deliberate dishonesty in the fashioning of the land laws. The shrewd men of business everywhere tell us that unless the values of these are written down by their owners, there is no hope of settlement iu the country, and no prospect consequently of better days, A very important question at once rises up before the country. Are we to hasten this date of writing down, are we to save the owners the trouble by “expropriation?” The fall must come. The only question is, shall we buy before the fall or after. If before, we make a present to the holders of something they ere not entitled to. If we wait we fhall not have to buy at all : settlement finding moderate and reasonable pricss will invest. It is the extravagance of the present ideas of value held by owners and agents everywhere, which drives ths people away who want to settle. The bulk of the great holders, financial institutions and others, would be only too delighted to get the Government paper; whether you call it land debentures or by any other name, it will smell as sweet in their nostrils, disgusted wi?h all kinds of queer paper which represents much of it nothing. For our part we think that as they are doomed to lower values, they can be allowed to stew a little longer in their own juice. If they will agree to write off a aub* stantial part of their value, submitting to abide by the result of arbitration on the basis of the producing capacity, we might permit an expropriation measure to be placed on the Statute Book. But without some such security such a measure would open the flood gates of jobbery and corruption. On the whole the danger is so great that it is better to wait for the end of the stewing process which is going on.