Untitled

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 101, 11 December 1852, Page 9

To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times,

Sir, —I abstained from intruding upon your columns whilst abler and more voluminous correspondents claimed the attention of your readers ; but %. having developed from the aspirate to the exasperate state, and so quitted the field, and Mr. Wakefield's pen requiring perhaps a little breathing time, I may hope to find some room in your journal. It is unfortunate that an interesting discussion on a public question should have merged into a rather tedious one, as to the identity between Mr. Wakefield's opinions and those of his father. As, however, the discussion has commenced, literary truth demands that lit be not left as it stands at present. Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's opinions are before the world, and, to my mind, are widely different from those entertained by his son.

The questions at issue were, (1) what amount of rent should be charged upon the pasturage lands ? (2) Upon what tenures should the squatters hold their runs ? Now, however Mr. Gibbon Wakefield may advocate a nominal rent for pasturage when stating his views in the abstract (and I have read his chapter on pasturage in the " Art of Colonization " again with great care), —his opinion in practice was that it should be at the rate of twenty shillings per hundred acres ; and that, not an increasing rent as the run became stocked, but, charged in full over the whole run the first year. That was Mr. Wakefield's opinion when the Canterbury scheme was started, and I hear he had not changed it a short time ago. Mr. Gibbon Wakefield may have supposed this to be a nominal rent; indeed if he were, as his son states, a joint author of Mr. Felix Wakefield's pamphlet on Colonial Surveying, he certainly did think so. But, on the. subject of tenure I believe Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's views still more widely differ from tho.se of his son, for I am unable to find that he has ever advocated other than a yearly tenure for squatters, and I understand all the expressions which have been quoted from the chapter referred to, to apply to squatters simply permitted to use the pasturage of the unsold waste lands without any contingent advantages. This view is fully borne out by the language of the first publication of the Canterbury Association which had Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's assent. " Pasturage licenses will be issued for periods not exceeding twelve months. These licenses will, however convey no right to the soil nor will any allowance be made to the holders of them, for improvements, as the object of the Association is to avoid every thing likely to discourage sales." Upon the whole I understand Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's views to be, that 20s. should be charged upon every hundred acres of pasturage, and that the squatter should have no lease and no compensation. Hence Mr. Wakefield's appeal to his father's authority was as unsuccessful as unnecessary—unsuccessful, for his father's written opinions do not coincide with his ; and unnecessary, for his own opinions,—as I conceive required no such support. Not to weary your readers, I will again postpone the enquiry upon which I propose to enter as to the amount of rent which the squatters ought to pay. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, A Land and Stockownek.