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Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 470, 21 June 1890, Page 2

The Lyttelton Times is rough on the Minister of Lands, and makes these comments on his speech The Ministry has not treated the small bona fide settler class at all well. If Mr Richardson can prove that it haa he will surprise a great many persons .thmgbeal the colony, including the srnal;

settlers and the would-be settlers themselves. He contends, however, that no one has had a fair excuse for leaving New Zealand through being unable to obtain land. Well, we should have thought that an expensive journey from this island to the North Island ; a long, fruitless, hunt for land there; applications for land that is not to be got; and a return to this island—all at the expense of one disappointed man—would be reason enough. Will Mr Richardson deny that these experiences have been the fate of various deserving and industrious men ? Will he deny that men have gone on for months trying to get the land under his ‘ lucky bag' system, and have failed to get it ? Will he deny that his method of allotting land is but a big lottery, where the speculator, the dummy, the landjobber, and the big land shark have an equal or better chance than the single-handed bona fide settler ? Will he deny that honest, genuine settlers, wanting land and fully meaning to go on it, have been compelled to resort to themselves putting in dummy applications in order to get on equal terms with the land sharks and tricksters ? He assuredly cannot deny this last, because in the House he admitted it in the course of a debate last session. Mr Richardson mivht have taken warning, we should have thought, by this same debate. But judging by the self-confident tone of his speech, he seems convinced that selling land to anybody who chooses to buy it is settling the country.