A PUBLIC MAN’S DUTY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXIII, Issue 15923, 8 May 1912, Page 3

A PUBLIC MAN’S DUTY.

TO THE EDITOR. \ Sir.—l note through your columns that Mr G. Forbes has graciously condescended to bestow his attention on me. It reads very much like the story of the Pharisee and the publican. Mr Forbes infers that I have been putting a fnlso light on figures, and states, concerning my statement regarding tho enormous area of land in Now Zealand still in tho hands of the Crown, that mr statement is erroneous and misleading, and calculated to make the public believe that threefourths of the land is actually held back from settlement. Would 1 be m order in asking Mr Forbes to take a turn at “ sticking to the facts,” for if he reads my previous letter with intelligence ho will note that I proceed to show that the land is not held back, but dealt with in such a way as to be what I called “a gross public scandal.” I am not following Mr Forbes at present into his millions hero and there. I ask him to take my letter with the statement of Mr Anstey with regard to tho Maekenzio runs. Mr Anstey, a strong Government supporter, living* on the spot, gives the fact's and said tho conditions “encouraged the land speculator, monopolist and aggregator, and did everything possible to debar the bona fide settlor getting any lai\d at all.” Is that statement true or false ? Our law distinctly lays down that

no man shall get more than on© run, and 'will Mr Forbos explain why, after one of these runs had been reported as fit for sub-division and was sub-divided with all the expenses attaching thereto, the Minister allowed one man to collar the lot? Will Mr Forbes explain why his Government allowed these fourteen runs to be sold, and the nett return to the country, according to Mr Anstey’s return, to bo three bona fide settlers? . The Crown leaseholds, says Mr Forbes, are very closely settled, and yet one of the Commissioners referring to another block of Crown land, said the land was capable of being divided into four, but if the Government would only spend a fair sum in putting a road into it. it was capable of being cut into twelve to eighteen allotments. Did the Government make the road? Not much, there are no votes there. But they bought the Scargill settlement with the money that would have opened up their own lands. This property is in Mr Forbes’s own electorate, and ho knows full well that the Government are the laughing stock of the whole neighbourhood through the absurd price they paid for it. There were about twelve people on the property when it whs privately owned. Under the Government’s close settlement policy thcro are three bachelors, and five other sections that no one will look at. Two of the previous owner’s sons have now balloted for and obtained Government land in another part of the country. And Mr Forbes calls this making room for the growing population of New Zealand. Will Mr Forbes further explain why his party purchased Scargill, I bolieve for £IB,BBO, and are charging it up to the tenants at £21,320? Surely, when this land is bought thirty per cent above its value, Mr Forbes s paternal Government should have been satisfied with at most, interest on the bare cost, instead of putting their tenants in the screwpress.

Mr Forbes has an aching heart for tho poor settler. Has he forgotten that four years ago, before the election. his party brought down a forward policy and outlined a policy to spend * a million pounds on the back-blocks to give facilities to the settlers? Those settlers have been cruelly betrayed. A little more than one third of the money has been spent. X have dwelt on this phase of the subject on previous occasions in these columns. I know their cruel conditions. The new Surveyor-General, Mr James Mackenzie, who possesses an intimate knowledge of the back-blocks settlers, pleaded piteously recently (and risked censure by doing so), for some means of access to these pioneers who wore sacrificing themselves and families, dying in given instances beyond tho roach of medical aid. Bui instead of helping these Mr Forbes’< party sent written requests to the public bodies of Canterbury, requesting them to put in applications for monoy, and spreading broadcast Coronation

fifts, while the son of many a Canterury settler in the north was enduring hell for want of roads. Canterbury, with its good roads and goneral conditions, has _ supported this present party through ignorance. The awakened north, where the Government’s administration has become a byword and a hissing among the..people, has signed its death warrant.—l am, etc., DAVID JONES. March 7,1912.