CLOSE SETTLEMENT IN MARLBOROUGH.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 71, 25 March 1907, Page 4

CLOSE SETTLEMENT IN MARLBOROUGH.

The interesting correspondence on this subject which was printed in three issues of The Express last week will not, we are afraid, lead to the result desired by both correspondents. In any case, and under the most favourable circumstances; there is bound to be delay. In the article preceding this it is mentioned that the practice of buying land for settlement is likely to be discontinued. £fc will be convenient to give in this place the words used by Dr Findlay relating to this subject. We quote from our Wellington morning contemporary's report of the New Plymouth speech: " The repurchase' of estates system in the country was rapidly reaching a position presenting difficulties so dire as to be almost insurmountable. When they took a large estate now the State must pay full compensation and full value. Hence they would see that the Government could not purchase land at its true value, for there were all the heavy charges of the Compensation Court to add to it, and these, as in the case of Hatuma and Flaxbourne, were very high. The landowners exacted their own price, and the State was compelled to pay the price fixed by the Compensation Court. In the course of a few years the State had paid five millions in buying land for settlement. How could this go on for over, and how was the colony to stand it ? They must inevitably fall back on some other method, either the one Mr MeNab had devised, or a stringent graduated land

tax." We took occasion to show some time ago that Mr McNab's method would affect only one estate in jMarlborough,

so that the hopes of those who want to get the lands in this district cut up into small farms by State intervention will be bound up in the alternative. We hope it will be possible to devise some means for extending small settlement without having recourse to any "stringent" method, or to anything else savouring of unfairness. The time is approaching when it will not be advisable, from the present owners' point of view, to retain holdings over and above a certain area; the soil, in effect, will be too valuable to be used for anything short of close cultivation-. It is probable that this cause will operate to bring some portions at least of the large estates into the market well within the ten years' limit that Mr McNab desires to apply to the estates valued at over £50,000. The drawing of this conclusion seems to be justified by what has happened in many districts in the North Island, where the demand for dairying and grazing farms has brought about the disintegration of numerous large properties which had been1 kept intact through long years of low prices and financial stringency. It is a question of supply and demand, and though, here and there, the sentimental equation interferes, the commercial principle will generally prevail. In the localities to which reference has been made, large areas have been subdivided and sold upon the deferred payment system, and the small men have been started upon terms that compare favourably with the best obtainable from the State. The Government is industriously pleading that the large estate-owners are the natural enemies of the small settler, but the statement is not susceptible of proof in the North. How much there is of truth in it in respect of Marlborough we shall be in a position to judge during the next few years.