LAND TENURE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIX, Issue 13137, 27 May 1903, Page 6

LAND TENURE.

;-If Parliament must, ae Mr J. G. Wilson told the conference of delegates from the Farmers Unions in the Wellington district yesterday, come to a decision during the approaching session on the question of land tenure, it would be just as well for someone with authority from the Unions to explain exactly What they want. As regards Crown lands-, the settler is already at perfect liberty to select an3' form of tenure he pleases. Ho may take a lease in perpetuity, or he may take a lease with a right to purchase, or ho may acquire the freehold straight out. We do not approve of this option, but there it is, and surely the champions of the freehold have no reason to complain. If they want the settler to have the right to change his mind after he has made his bargain, perhaps after the expenditure of public money has raised the value of his holding by fifty or a hundred per cent, they must bo logical and demand the same right for the tenants of the private land-owner. If it is just for the State to be compelled to sell land for £6 an acre that is worth £lO an acre, jb is just for the private owner to bo treated in the same way. The private owner, in fact, would have less ground than the State would have to object to isuoh a law. He has not built railways and made roads to give additional value to his land, and would lose only the unearned increment. But we did not start out to rediscuss the whole question of land tenure. For the present wo are only anxious to know how th® Farmers’ Unions are going to present it to Parliament.