Sale of Crown Lands.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume IX, Issue 1752, 12 October 1887, Page 2

Sale of Crown Lands.

In the course of a lecture at Dunedin on the depression Bishop Neville spoke as follows : — Men who wanted to get into Parliament were talcing to shout out "Laud for th • people," but they all wanted the same thing. Tbe land was for the people, but what was meant was that the land was only for a set of people who had not got a cent in their pockets to cultivate it. It was generally thrown out as a kind of innuendo that people who had a large sum of money in their pockets should be kept off the land. They were bloated aristocrats. That was the idea that got about through tliese popular cries ; but after all, the working classes had common sense enough to see, when they came to reflect upon these things, that to put a man upon the land who had not git money to feuce it, aud had to borrow cionev to put stock upon it, could not do much. And if tbe country was even to be prosperous, there must be men of different degrees of monetary capacity and power, and there must be men who could take up land and work it after they had got it. What was the use of sending 100 or 500 men upon land, giving them ten acres a-piece, which they could not do a thing wilh when they bad got it ? They could not employ eacb o her because they had no money, and that w.is an utterly futile way of settling the country. If we wanted to settle tbe country successfully, we must have men who have, got capital, as well as men who had got labor to dispose of. (Applause. It was a great mistake to try and keep capitalists out of the country, and to make it almost impossible to get any land at all ; and t apital had been kept out of tbe country, and he held that that was the greatest cause of suffering and distress which we were more or less lying under. Well, then, they still had to ask tbe question : How is capital to be brought into the country ? Millionaires would not come to us under any conditions. If they would, so much the better ; but bow were people with moderate incomes, of say £500 a-year, to be induced to come here ? He bad come across a large number of these people who visited tbe country, but were prevented from settling here by our existing land laws. They might talk aa they liked about Freetrade and Protection, but they could uot boast of being in a Freetrade country, because they hindered the sale of laud iv every way, and made it almost impossible for a man to get any. Some parts of the land system might be good enough— for instance, the deferred payment system ; but they would have to do away with all obstructions to the purchase of hind, and have something like freetrade in land. If a man bought a million of acres and had got money to cultivate it and fence it, it would be a great nrlvantnge to the country. They should prevent the acquisition of large properties by nonresident people, and when they had legislation in that direction they should let it be known in Europe and through all parts of the world, because it was generally known that tbere was great difficulty in obtaining land in New Zealand. At present it was easier for people with money to get an estate in Great Britain than to get one in New Zealand ; so why should they couae to the colony? He thought a largo number of people with money should be encouraged by Government to come here with their families and buy a small estate and make it their own.

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