The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1884.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7274, 23 June 1884, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, JUNE 23, 1884.

In tho course of his speech during tho debate ou tho Ministerial statement of Tuesday last, Sir George Grey made an attack ou the Government which was most serious. His meaning was very plain. Ministers were not entitled to a day’s grace, even for the purpose of appealing to tho country, because at any moment they might oppress the poor and exalt tho rich. The opportunities are iu the administration of the public lands of the Colony. To sustain this charge Sir George amplified a story he had already told the House on a previous occasion, and introduced some other instances which he grouped with a skilful eye for contrast. Tho thing was worked up witli dramatic force. The poor man Walker, at Stndholrae, cannot get a small, but choice, piece of land at Waimate because the neighbouring •Dives made good a previous application of twenty-two years* standing. While this rich man could get the benefit of an opportunity embracing twenty-two years, a brave soldier who had fought and bled for his country, for whom great heroism had obtained the rare and much prized distinction of the Victoria Cross, could not make good his land order, because be had allowed the date mentioned in the stated limits of its validity to go by without taking action. In another case, the poor widow of a soldier who held an order covering a right to land to the value of c£3s, was, for the same reason, obliged to go without her little bit of land, so necessary to the little family. While, in contrast to this, was the case of certain wealthy men who, in defiance of the law limiting single holdings of gum-bearing land in the North to 80 acres, bad obtained thousands from the Waste Lands Board. The moral drawn by Sir George Grey was that the poor man has hard measure, while the rich man enjoys the extension of every privilege. In the one case, he held, the hardness of the measure amounts to oppression ; the treatment in the other constituting the most law-breaking favouritism it is possible to imagine. A Government which can allow such things, Sir George Grey concluded, ought not to be allowed to hold office oven for the brief period necessary for an appeal to the country.. That brief period will be a continuation of the bad .time with which Lazarus is cursed, and of the good time which Dives enjoys. Unless Ministers are compelled to resign, there is, in fact, no saying what may not be done in the next two months. Such is Sir G. Grey’s indictment against the Government.

Before examining the indictment as a whole, it will be as well to consider the case of Walker. It is, of course, a most hard case. It is simply monstrous that any application for the public lands should he allowed to hold good for twenty years and over. Who is responsible that this monstrous thing has actually taken place ? Not the law, for as yet it is by no means sure that the law has been properly interpreted. As yet the Waste Lands Board of Canterbury, which has done the most monstrous thing on record, is responsible. And until that Board can, by a decision of the Supreme Court, get the burden shifted to the shoulders of the law, the Board will have to bear the responsibility. The Minister is not responsible, because the Minister has no power to control or revise the Board’s decisions. The law appoints the Supreme Court to be the reviser, and lays down a certain form of procedure. As Mr Steward —who, as member for Waimate, took a practical rather than a political interest in this case of injustice—pointed out, the Minister for Lands took care that the form of procedure prescribed by the law has been complied with, so that the remedy of an application to the Supreme Court is still open to him. On the first occasion on which the case was brought up, the mention, by the Minister, of the Court as the redresser of grievances was scouted by Sir George Grey as the mention of costly absurdity, and described by him as oppression glorying in its scandalous system. This Mr Eolleston met, on the second occasion on which the subject was brought forward by Sir George Grey, by the statement of his readiness as Minister to ensure Walker against any loss that might arise out of an application to the Supreme Court. It would have been better if this intimation had been made to Walker as soon as the re-hearing of his case by the Wade Lands Board put him in a position to appeal. Walker would then probably have appealed. He applied instead to Sir George Grey, who kept him in petto until ho could make use of him on the floor of the House. The debate, however, showed that the case of Walker received the correct and only possible treatment from the Minister of Lands. It must, therefore, bo struck out from its place in Sir George Grey’s indictment against the Government. Sir George Grey’s charge that the Minister ought to have done something more than he did is mot by the fact that the

Minister did all that the law allowed him. If tho charge remains, it is in tho shape of a complaint that tho Minister does not break tho law.

Of tho rest of tlio indictment, tho n) oat important is the case of the improperly leased gum-flolds. Of this more must ho known bofoio a decision can bo como to by public opinion. At present, it is said that tho leases derive whatever validity they may possess from a proclamation of Sir George Grey’s. The cases of the land scrip are matters of minor administration. It is quite true that tho Government cares little for tho interests of brave soldiers who have done good service. So much tho case of Major Eopata very effectually proves. Their minds do not rise in considerations of this kind above the level of departmental routine, guided by dry legal technicalities. Of course, wo do not as yet know whether the publicity given to tho limits of time, beyond which land orders ceased to bo valid, was sufficient, and, if,.so, whether tho responsibility rests with tho Government. But, in any case, tho public mind cannot well understand how it is that any limits of that kind can operate against tho giving of their just rights to soldiers who have borne the brunt of war in the public defence. It might have been expected that Ministers would have asked Parliament to make some provision in such cases. However, as far as the indictment of feir G. Grey is concerned, these cases aro evidently not within the discretionary responsibility of the Government. The charge as to the gumfields waits for further light. Most of the indictment is a wild attack against the Minister of Lands for not having broken tho law in all directions. We hope the day is far distant when any popular loader can command popular applause for attacks of that nature.