Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1904. A BALANCING PERFORMANCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1904, Page 4

Evening Post. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1904. A BALANCING PERFORMANCE.

The members of the various Land I Boards wno have been coarerring with i the Minister of Lands during the last few days were entertained by the Ministry at the Bellevue Gardens on Saturday, when they were treated to an excellent lunch and to some frankly partisan speeches. We are not among those who grudge the occasional use of public' money for the purposes of hospitality, I but as it is the country and not the Mm-! istry which finds the money, both hosts ' and guests should recognise that any- i thing of the nature of a party demon- ! stration should be avoided. Eulogy ia, : of course, appropriate to such occasions, ' and when the toast is "The. Premier and i the Ministry," and the speakers are the j late member for the Mauawatu and a ] present member of the Westland Land ] Board, one expects and does not grudge the laying on ol the uutter with a liberal hand. Mr. Seddon is of course a | heaven-born statesman, and to say as • much of the Minister of Lands pc».« tt jij! > ' does not exceed the legitimate bounds of post-prandial oratory, e\en when the public is paying the bill. Such eulogies harmonise with the social spirit ol a gathering assembled more for good-fel-luwship than for business, and nobody is going to mistake them ior the verdict of sober history which is concerned ' to tell the whole truth. On the other , hand, polemics and detraction are for the . same reason utterly out of place on such j an occasion, nor even in order to heighten I the i virtues of a blameless Ministry is it permissible to refer to tneir predecessors as utterly devoid of merit, or to their present opponents as guilty of tactics which are "a discredit to humanity." These things may, of course, be true, but such truths should be reserved for other times. Of the Native Minister, who was the chief speaker on the occasion in question, at is fair to say that so far from making any such mistake he showed himself kindly and generous in acknowledgment of the good work don© by those who are not of the household of the Seddonian faith. In point of taste his speech was an excellent one, and in point of fact he indulged in no such absurdity as the contention of his colleague that the Advances to Settlers Act had brought down the rate of interest on ordinary mortgages from 8 and 10 per cent, to 4£ per cent, or thereabouts. It was also remarkable that the i\ative Minister and | not the Minister of Lands should have made the running on the vexed question of freehold versus leasehold. Possibly the latter's leanings towards the freehold, which are said to have been specially pronounced during his visit to Puhiatua at the time of the by-election, were held to disqualify him from dealing with so critical a question. Mr. Carroll's treatment of the subject, if not illuminating, was certainly tactful. He talked round it and about it and over its head with the most graceful agility possible, and when he had concluded he was no nearer a logical conclusion than when lie began. It was as happy a balancing performance as even his political chief could have achieved after so many more years of piactice. He favoured the leasehold, but he did not oppose the freehold; in fact, he favoured both with something of that vague plausibility which enables Mr. Balfour to seem to bestow his blessing upon freetrade and protection in the same breath. The attitude of the Native Minister is practically that of the Ministry as a whole. They desire that the State shall both eat its cake and have it, shall both I sell its freehold and keep it. The special fallacy about Mr. Carroll's attempt to reconcile these contradictories seems to us to lie in the suggestion that a definite dividing line can ever be drawn for legislative or administrative purposes between the working and the speculative aspir- ! ants to the freehold. "Those who wanted a genuine freehold for themselves could not be blamed," he said, "but there was a large "section who wanted the freehold for speculation and experiment." We do not believe that the latter is at present a large class, but the point is, not for what immediate purpose is the j freehold being demanded, but to what uses will it be put if the concession is once made. That the immediate demand may be in any given case what Mr. Carroll would have us regard as a genuine and legitimate one provides no security at all that the land may not subsequently become the prey of the speculator and the monopolist. When once the freehold has been alienated, the State has lost its control, and all future dealings must depend upon the operations of the market. Mr. Carroll deprecated the appeals to the traditional prejudice which the Britisher is supposed to entertain in favour of the freehold, and very properly urged that "the public mind should be educated to realise that the Crown lands belonged to t 1 * people of the colony, and that the birthright of the people should not be given away to satisfy any whim." Small indeed is the amount which his colleagues have contributed towards the education of the people in this direction, and his own contributions in the earlier parts of his speech were of

a distinctly negative character. We trust that the Royal Commission which is to deal with the subject will put a little more backbone into the Government, and it is high time that it got to work.