FREEHOLD v. LEASEHOLD

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVI, Issue 51, 7 December 1909, Page 6

FREEHOLD v. LEASEHOLD

A PRACTICAL VIEW. doing in and out among the settlers, (lien who have reclaimed tne forest and spent their years in isolation and hard toil, wlio have faced privation and risks and dangers in the heroic effort to aiake a iionie in the, bush, who have year by year with, infinite pains won a rooting and a measure of success, one iinds tliem contented indeed, with that sort of contentment that the knowledge of honest toil accomplished and difficulties overcome always gives, but still troubled with daily apprehension as 10 the future (says a writer in the 1 Wairarapa Daily Times'). The leasehold tenure, it is urged, gave the settler an opportunity to settle with little capital, and therefore, say the out-and-out advocates of that tenure, he ought to be contented with that state of life into jvhich it has pleased the-State to place him. But the thoughtful settler, the best type, finds that tho leasehold (pure and simple, and with no outlook) h*as disadvantages, while the freehold ap peals powerfully to him as tho true and only haven of security. Under these en cumstances it is not to be wondered at that the settler reasons thus: The leasehold tenure was an experimental institution. Nobody could foresee how it would work out in practice. Already the 999-vear lease has been abandoned by its creators as unsatisfactory, and the rural mind inclines ever more and more to the freehold

In conversation with a Pahiatua sottier of tile best type ho remarked: "A leaseholder is after all only a sojourner. His aim is to get all lie can out of the and while he is there, whereas the .reeholaer looks forward to a peaceful IKissession without irritating inspectors and ruinous re-valuations. Again—and this is a most important matter—if A and li, leaseholder and freeholder respectively, have occasion to go to the money market or even to purchase stock on terms their reception by the money-lender or tihe stock agent is entirely different. A is jxilitely told that there is no money available for leaseholders at ordinary rates, while B is handed a cheque or his bill for stock is accepted with readiness.

"Look here," he proceeded with increased emphasis, "these townspeople who talk alwut us know no more of our real conditions than they know of Thibet. Why, if a man succeeds in the country the towns gots the benefit of it. Therefore if they had sense they would vote for his having the tenure that he wants and that suits him. Then he will prosper; and who will get tlhe benefit of his prosperity? The towns! Our families, if not exposed to the temptations of town life, are lacking in all its advantages. We live strenuous and simple lives. We are making the colonv and ministering to the prosperity of the towns. Surely we are entitled to be fairly represented in the counsels of the Dominion, and I maintain we are not. I would give every man (for the reasons I have stated) the option of purchase after an interval during which lie shall have proved himself a bona fide settler. Of course we don't want vast aggregations and monopolies. Let us have limitation of area and every safeguard against the evils of the past, but let us ..give the settlers the boon thev crave—the possession of a homestead. It is the voice of the toiler, not of the agitator, that speaks."