Evening Post FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1914.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1914, Page 6

Evening Post FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1914.

PROTECTING THE BIG ESTATES One of tho. features of the Prime Minister's speech at Napier was the progressive increase in the area of land purchased during the last four years under the Land for Settlements Act. ,Of course, the object was to show that, in land-purchase, Reform had out-liberalled the Liberals ; and probably the claim is just, but what does it amount to? Merely to this : that in their latter years the Liberals had begun to see the limitations of the old methods, but were too timid to initiate new ones. It was the same with the graduated land tax. The Liberajs once contemplated a stiff graduation, but Mr. Ormond has told us how they repented, relented, and finally added another good resolution to a certain pavement. Consequently, in 1912, Mr. Maseey was able to take office and, while animated with the kindliest of feeling towards the great landowners, succeeded without protest in lowering the exemption of the graduated land tax and thus extending its scope downwards. Also, he shook up the dry bones of the Land for Settlements Act, and now proudly confronts Liberals with the fruits of their own estate-breaking machine, the product of the brain of M'Kenzie, and formerly the best-hated (by the landowners) of all tho measures evolved by the virile Liberal policy of the 'nineties. Let it be granted, then, that the Liberals have been hoist with their own petard. While they slept the enemy came into their camp and turned their own guns on them. It i& a rare bit of historical irony, and it is a fate that deserves to befall any political party that goes to sleep when it should ,be watching and fighting. But beyond that he has " dished the Whigs," Mr. Massey has indicated no advance whatever in the direction of solving the problem of estate-breaking. In the last two years he has purchased 193,160 acres, bub he does not state the , cost per settler at which these purchases and subdivisions work out. If the Land for Settlements Act is used to buy remote third-claes country, the Government appears to be getting a good deal of land for its money. If the purchases are made among accessible and partly-improved estates, the reverse is the case. But the real test is the cost per settler, and wa have already shown that the operation of the Act up to 1912 resulted in an average cost of nearly £1300. Calculating at that rate, anything like a big policy of estate-breaking would involve a capital outlay that the Government's finance cannot possibly bear. Closer settlement on the largo scale still awaits a Government with sufficient courage to adopt the principle of compulsory sale on deferred payment, which may beapplied with discrimination, and which would be an effective corrective of that inadequate use Of land which Mr. Massey himself has eloquently condemned.