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Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 172, 21 July 1888, Page 2

BALLANCE’S SETTLEMENT SCHEME. How fallacious it often is to guage the merits or demerits of a system by the strong current of public opinion with which the question is surrounded. What scheme could have been subjected to a more bitter denunciation than was Mr Ballance's Village Settlement scheme, when the theory was being practically tested ? The Press and the public were furious—the whole fabric was, it was supposed, torn to shreds, and a complete exposure made of a rotten scheme which (it was asserted) would result in the ruination and pauperisation of those who became practical units of it. The scene is changed, and the time may yet come when many will be deeply thankful to Mr Ballance and equally re gretful that the operations of his scheme were not extended. There is something about the expenditure, however which we fail to understand, and that is that while it was distinctly asserted in Parliament that £70,000 had been thrown away (much of it without authority) the whole amount spent to the middle of May last was only X’5,801, which has been advanced on thesecurity of the settlers’ farms, and which, according to the report, is very good security, too. Assuming that this point can be satisfactorily explained, the most bitter political opponents cannot but feel gratified at the result, though there may be an occasional sneer of “pauper settlement” from the Ormond-Whitmore ring A few well conducted farms, made from such unpromising materials, and with such small areas and stocks, may seem insignificant and mean to men of this class, but if we had many more of them New Zealand would be in a different position to what she is to-day. These small holders may have a hard uphill fight, with no banking institutions to back them, but they are the stamp of men that will be most helpful in retrieving the colony from its position. Of the whole number, we are told that only ten of these village settlers have turned back, which fact reads strange ( in the face of the reports that were circulated about eighteen months ago, The following remarks from a contemporary are so wisely thought out that we cannot do better than reprint them: —

When we take into account the unpromising character of some of these settlers ; many of them without a farthing belonging ta them ; many without the smallest experience in rural pursuits, and nearly all of them unprovided with what is considered to be the very humblest appliances or means for carving out a home in the wilderness, we declare that such results should silence any man who would pronounce that any man, or any class of man, is unfit for betaking himself to life in the country with the intention of making a suppor for himself and his family. And when, as every steamer leaves our wharf carrying away hundreds of stalwart men, turning from our shores in despair and looking away to a distant land to find the home denied them here, his must be a strangely-constituted mind that will not regret that some such system of prac-i tioal settlement ss this has not been continued which might intercept ths fugitives and give them facilities for finding homes among our fruitless areas of fertile lands, and under a climate unsurpassed on earth. Verily the curse of ill-government is on our country where such sights as these are seen,