NO FREEHOLD.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13876, 29 October 1910, Page 8

NO FREEHOLD.

It would bo deeply interesting to know just what Sir George Reid said to himself when ho heard that the new Minister for Lands in New South Wales had decided that no more Crown lands in that State were to be disposed of ou the freehold tenure. The High Commissioner has been doing his utmost to advertise Australia and divert to his country part of the tide of emigrants that flows steadily to Canada, and the announcement that New South Wales is not prepared to give immigrants tho freehold is not calculated to help him. Mr McGowen protests that his Government wants immigrants, but he ought to realise the futility of trying te attract settlers by tho offer of tho leasehold, while Canada gives farm land for nothing to bona fide settlers. If Mr McGowen's partj* think that Englishmen will prefer being tenants in New South Wales to being their own masters in Canada, they know very little about human nature. Many English emigrants, like tho settlers in tho early days, aro leaving England largely becauso they aro tired of tho tenant system, and they are not likely to regard State landlordism as any great improvement on tho system they live under in England. Mr Wade's policy was to increase the opportunities for acquiring the freehold, and at the same time to take measures to prevent the aggregation of estates. No doubt at the next election, which may probably tako place shortly, the farmers will bear the two policies in mind, and vote according. When one reflects on tho disparity between Australia's area and its population, the abolition of the inducement to settlers that freehold tenure affords, strikes one as almost criminal.