ENGLISH OWNERS OF LAND IN THE UNITED STATES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7145, 24 April 1885, Page 3

ENGLISH OWNERS OF LAND IN THE UNITED STATES.

The bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives prohibiting aliens and foreigners from acquiring or owning lands has been ordered to bo reported back to the House by the Public Lands Committee, within recommendation that it should pass. The members of the committee state that they have learnt with reasonable certainty that cer- / tain noblemen, chiefly Englishmen, have acquired, and now own, in the aggregate, about twenty-one million acrea of land within the United States, although they have not sufficient information to state the quantity owned by untirled aliens, i The report proceeds :—" This alien, nonresident ownership will in time| lead to a system of landlordism incompatible with the best interests and free institutions of the United States. The foundation for such a system is being laid broadly. In the Western States and territories a considerable number of immigrants are annually arriving, who aro to become tenants and herdsmen on the vast possessions of these foreign lords under contracts made before they sailed for America." The report says further: — " The avarice and enterprise of European capitalists have caused them to invest many millions in American railroad and land bonds, covering, perhaps, 100,000,000, the greater part of which under foreclosure sales, will most likely before many years become the property of these foreign bondholders, in addition to their present princely possessions. It is thus manifest that if the present alien ownership is an evil, of which we have no doubt, the probabilities of the near future still more imperatively demand legislation for its prevention. The aggressive foreign capital is not confined to the lands which it has purchased, but, overleaping its boundaries, has caused hundreds of miles of the public domain to be fenced up for the grazing of vast herds of cattle, and has set at defiance the rights of honest but humble settlers."