STOPPING THE LAND SALES.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XII, Issue 834, 26 June 1855, Page 3

STOPPING THE LAND SALES.

We copy, from the last uumber of the ' Proviu cial Government Gazette,' the correspondence which has passed between tho General and Pro vincial Governments, on the subject of finding the money for the surveys ami other necessary expenses of laying out ami preparing for sale the Waste Lands of tho Grown. The public will there see the real cause of the vexatious and ruinous delays which havednven away so many iutendiug land purchasers aud still keep here many useful settlers idling away their time, their means, and their energies, while the two Governments are disputing with each other as to the waysand means. Putting aside all question as to whether the Provincial Government could pay without money or without having a Debenture Act to raise tho means, we think there can be but one opinion as to the paramount duty of the Governor, who had plenty of means at command and who by the Constitution Act was expressly required to pay the expenses of Surveys &c, incurred in bringing the Waste Lands to sale, to have done so without the loss of a single day. There has been a great deal said about the Superintendent doing all he could to throw obstacles in the way of the Land Regulations being effectively carried out, but a perusal of the correspondence to which we refer will go far, in our opinion, to place the burden upou other shoulders. Indeed, we hear that the General Government have at last awakened to the serious injury they have caused, and are now prepared to undertake the payment of the necessary expenditure ; in fact the publication of th e correspondence would seem to have alarmed them at last into a performance of their duty.

The ontrage on law and order detailed in our last, committed by a member of the Provmcia Council, in his pretended capacity of City Sur veyor, is defended by the ' New-Zealander, upon the ground that the City Surveyor Is still in office, and that the City Council still survives, notwithstanding their being extinguished, — not certainly by the Superintendent, for he was left merely to declare the fact — bnt extinguished by the Provincial Council in their unfortunate attempt to mend the City Council Act ; — the ' New-Ztalander,' we say, defends the deforcement of the Provincial Authorities, in the matter of the City Wharf, because the City Surveyor is still legally iu his office. But the legality of his first appointment to, or continuance in, his office has nothing to do with the question of deforcement. The legality of his office has yet to be tried, and was the very question which the Surveyor wanted to raise ; but instead of doing so in a legal and legitimate manner he, with other men took the law in their own hands, endaugered the public poace, and set constituted authority, law and order, at defiance. Yet so violent is party feeling, so regardless of results, that this conduct is defended by a public journal — one too affecting some pretensions to religion!