LAND FOR SETTLEMENT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15918, 2 May 1912, Page 3

LAND FOR SETTLEMENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Si ri _l have, to thank you for your offer of space to discuss land, proposals. I have previously placed my views on many points before your readers, and I can quite understand your desire not to discuss the Iliberal’s land policy when Mr Fowlds, in your issue to-day, defies anyone “to soy what are the principles of the Liberal Party.’ They are indeed wounded in the house of their friends. The nett result of the illustration I gave you proved that wo are paying these £17.000 for two settlers. I write as one of the community to protest against pawning our name in the London market for such an inadequate return. The high price of land in Canterbury is admittedly dangerous, and yet the Government are continually lifting land values by buying highly improved farms in settled districts for cash at orices higher than the owners have been able to secure in the open market on" extended terms. Ton say it is futile for me to occupy space with the sad story of a dispossessed landlord. How fertile is your imagination! Dispossessed, indeed! Bunkum! Mhy the late owners of Rua'pmia, Drayton, Stoke and Scargill have had a smile on their faces ever since. I have written with considerable self-restraint on many occasions, but when T see the rank hypocrisy of the men of the socalled Liberal Party preaching land settlement and gulling the public when tliev themselves arc playing into the hands of the land speculators and commission agents, it ma.ies. mo hot. “Farm the land”, is their war , “farming the people” is their occupation. Mr Anstey, M.L.C., a strong Government supporter, in Hansard No. ' . 1911. speaks in bitter terms. He said of the Mackenzie runs the conditions were “such as encouraged the land neculator, monopolist and aggregate and “ did everything possible to debat the bona-fide settler getting any land at all.” Fourteen runs were balloted tor and only three separate cccupaaoit-., the rest'were aggregations of one K J and another. Mr Anstey proceeds to say that the next fourteen sections weio sold by public auction, and without any exception,” he says, it w, saddest sight I ever witnessed in life in regard to land settlement, same thing, said Mr Anstey, i S on ’ from one end oi: New Zta , the other, and from my own personal experience I know he is right. Three-fourths of the land of Ne\ Zealand still belongs to the Crow . - if thia were judicially cut up _A, tied it would give a fillip to land ! ment such as Now Zealand j ias seen. The way it lias been deal , f is a gross public scandal, euffic the facts were known to drum any ernment out of office, and in t° •• 1 f paper the Santa Claus of the P‘ , Ministry makes the distinctly mi ' 1 irig statement that a few friends eg Reform Party hold 13,000.000 (What do they hold and whyr . bulk of it is Government leases » " | described bv tlie Liberal Govern land a standing monument to then I competency or* worse. ~I af.i. | DAVID JONESApril 29.