The Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI- WEEKLY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1883.

Inangahua Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1294, 7 September 1883, Page 2

The Inangahua Times, PUBLISHED TRI- WEEKLY. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1883.

Thk rejection by the Legislative Council of the provision introduced into the Land Act Amendment Bill to prevent " dummyism " is an appropriate climax to all the previous proceedings of that Chamber, and .will henceforth stand on record as one of the most unredeemed acts of shamelessness ever pepetrated by any Colonial Legislative body. Through the instrumentality of tKe Otago Waste Lands Board, widespread and systematic evasions of the law in connection with sales of deferred payment pastoral lands were recently brought to light, there* The matter gradually assumed the character of a great public scandal, and in the end the Government were Compelled to take cognisance of it A Royal Commission was accordingly appointed to enquire into thesafraudu lent transactions. The Commissioners sat for several weeks, took the most voluminous evidence, the result being that they reported s there had been " wide-spread and sytematic evasions of thd law," in relation to the recent >Cles of deferred payment pastoral lands in Otago. The Committee even ventf further than this, and furnished good reasons for believing that the flame evasions were being practised in other parts of the Colony. The meaning of all this in plain phraseology was that the law passed with the special object of settling small holders upon the land, was being violated in a most shameful manner by squatters and wealthy monopolists, and in view of the great urgency for legislation in order to prevent further frauds of the kind the Commission recommended that a special clause on the subject should be added to the Land Amendment Act then before the House*. This was accordingly done, and the Act got through the House of Representatives as quickly as possible. But upon the measure reaching the Upper House the Council at once struck out the obnoxious clause, and thus reduced the Bill to a nullity. In what the Council finds, or hopes to find, justification for this extraordinary proceeding it is difficult to imagine. The evidence upon which the charges of "dummyism " in Otago rested is incontrovertible, and the reasons given by the Commission for believing that the practice is geneial throughout the Colony are as conclusive as they could possibly be, and yet in the face of this clear and convincing testimony of the need for preventive legislation the Council bars the way to redress, A more disgraceful act has never occurred in the political history of the Colony, and it will at all events have the effect of bringing home forcibly to the minds of the people in New Zea-

land the need for agitation for reform : in the constitution of our Legislature.