LAND REVENUE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 10628, 5 June 1897, Page 2

LAND REVENUE.

A most unsSHsfaotery feature ,of the colonial accounts is the steady fall Jo the revenue from land, If the fall were only in the amonut reoelved for oonh sales there would be the oonsolatlon that the land remained the property of the j colony, and returned an aanna! revenue In the shape of rent. Seeing the attaohment of the present Minister of JDands to the leasehold as compared with the freehold system, and his boasba of the nnmber of people who hare taken ap land nndor hla regime, one would natnrally expe&t a large increase in rents. Bat the fact ie that there is a falllng.off all round. Here are the figures :— Maroh Cash Deferred 31. Sales. Payments. Rents. Total 1894 70,341 58,328 184,389 313 058 1895 75,162 56,104 184 699 316 165 1896 73,521 53,049 165,102 29U72 1897 67,068 42,452 163,432 272 952 We confess to finding dlffioulty ln'aooountlng for this falling-off in rents. One explanation, no doubt, ia that the bocalled settlement of which tho Uon. Mr M'Keozle boasts to much is simply bogus. In the Government Gazette of May 20th do fewer than 220 leases, in thirty different special aettlementß, were de.

lolored forfeited. In Wellington alone during 1896 there were 449 forfelturesi covering 80,000 aoree, According to tha laab Crown Lands report there were only 01 residents out of 1056 "selnotora" In apaolal oettlements. Probably not five per cent of the remainder will ever go on the land. An a matter of bald fast land settlement hsa been lnneh less under the proaent Government than under the previous administration^. From 1886 to 1891 the area taken np was 2,874,800 acre«. From 1891 to 1896 it waa 2,705,900 nores nominally. But while la the first period bho settlement waa genuine, a large percautago of tbab lv the lust period wqb fiotltlouß,nnd simply represented gambling In Crown lands. Yet In this poriod 121,250,000 was epont in thn purchase of native lands and private estates!, and the expenses of the Land Department nearly doubled. The private estates purohased last year returned a revenue of only £19,638, or a fraotion over 2 per cent on the expenditure, thus Involving the country in a heavy lost. So ranch for the vaunted land administration of the IHon, John M'Kodzlo. _