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

Even the H.B. Herald, a strong supported of the Government, comes down roughly on Mr Fergus, and thus deals with the proposal for Government to step in and give assistance in relieving monetary institutions of some of their bad speculations If Mr Fergus relies on Mr Ormond’s support in his big scheme for relieving banks'and loan companies of their bad bargains at the colony’s expense, we venture to say he will find that he never made a greater error in his life. Mr Fergus’s plan for “ settling the country ” is based on a fundamental error. He assumes that land now worked in large blocks would, if acquired by the Government and cut up into smaller blocks, suddenly becomes more valuable. This involves the further assumption that the banks and loan companies are managed by fools, in comparison to whom. Mr Fergus is a shining light among men. It requires no demonstration to prove that if the Government could make a profit out ofthe transaction, or could even sell at cost filus expenses, the mortgagees could do the same. It is admitted that they are very anxious to realise on these securities, for the business of banks and loan companies is not to hold and work land, but to lend money out at interest, and the mortgages are merely taken to secure repayment of that money. If they saw any reasonable prospect of getting their money—or, in many cases, two-thirds or even half of it—by cutting these lands up and selling them, they would not be so idiotic as to hold them at a 'loss. No doubt if cut up they would bring more per acre, but the expenses of survey and sale would absorb the difference. The matter is so plain and so patent that one is astonished at a Minister propounding such a scheme. It is like advocating a Land Purchase Bill for New Zealand on the lines of Mr Balfour’s Irish measure, though here there is not the same excuse oi necessity to be put forward as an apology for the proposal.