HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Tuesday, 4th December.

Evening Post, Volume XV, Issue 285, 5 December 1877, Page 2

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. Tue sday , 4th December.

In the House yesterday the whole afternoon and part of the evening sitting was taken up with the Land Bill in committee. Mr. L'umsden moved that the latter part of clause 4, which fixed £1 as the upset price of land sold by auction, be struck out, but this was defeated on a division by 34 votes to 26. The clause was, however, so amended that any land put up to auction and not suld, may be/ by proclamation of the Governor, thrown open for free selection, at a price of not less than £1 per acre After a lengthy discussion a clause extending the Auckland " homestead system " to the whole of the colony was added to the bill. The time for exercising voluntcar scrip was extended for twelve months, a clause to this effect lying added by 33 votes to 22, but Mr. Stout got a further amendment carried by 28 votes to 26, preventing scrip being exercised where it is not held by volunteers. Some minor technical details were also amended. — The House then went into committee on the Financial arrangements Bill. Mr. Stout moved an amendment in the interpretation clause, giving the 20 per cent, returned to the provincial districts to the counties in which the money was raised, and in proportion to the land sold. This met with warm opposition. Mr. Carrington argued that such a system would lead to patches of good roads and bridges here and there over the country, with bad roads batween ; Mr. Rowo and others represented that traffic having its termination in the outlying districts would pass over the roads in the settled counties; and Major Atkinson considered it would be untair to the settled countie*, which had never had any money returned to them to open up their land. — Mr. Stout replied that this 20 per cent, was " some* thing new," which no province except Canterbury ever had before, so the settled counties would be in exactly the same position as at present, wh"e the outlying districts, which most needed it, as they had comparatively little land to rate, would to doubly banefitted. — Mr. Stout's amendment was lost on a division, by 31 votes to 29. — Mr. Maclean then moved that clause 4 (providing for the colonialisation of the land fund) be struck out, but on a division this was negatived by 40 votes to 14. — Ultimately both the Waste Lands Bill and the Financial Arfangement Bill passed their third reading. — A number of other measures, including the second readings of the Hutt County Office Site Bill, the Rating Act Amendment Bill, and the Counties Act Amendment Bill, took up the time of tho House until 1.40, wheD it adjourned.