MR. MASSEY AND THE LAND.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 94, 20 April 1904, Page 6

MR. MASSEY AND THE LAND.

It appears that Mr Massey has not taken the trouble to make himself acquainted with the facts of the one question on which, above all others, he claims to speak with authority. In his Lawrence address, the Leader of the Opposition deplored the folly of the Government in exhausting our credit by borrowing on tl.e English market so as to purchase estates under the Land for Settlement Act, with the result that the ownership of our lands was" passing to people outside the colony. In reply to this charge, we have the authority of the Premier for stating that, apart from moneys re-lent after mortgages had been paid off, the amount supplied to the Lands Purchase Department for the past two years (1902,1904) was under £900,000, and the whole of this money was raised in the colony. In fact, no money has been borrowed outside New Zealand for land purchase within the last two years. No doubt Mr Massey's assertion was safe to raise a cheer at a country meeting. But we have a right to expect something more than the methods of the political "flat-catcher" from the Leader of the Opposition; and we hope that in future Mr Massey will be more careful in hia choice of the weapons that he thinks necessary to employ for the discomfiture of Mr Seddon.