A GAMBLE FOR LAND.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 71, 25 March 1907, Page 5

A GAMBLE FOR LAND.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —In a reprint from The Evening Post, dated March 19, you give your readers a column of journalism or editorial twaddle intended, no doubt, by the latter paragraph to influence the Minister for Lands in his decision on the case. Well, Sir, as one of the thousand leaseholders in Marlborough, I might say we are also looking forward with keen interest for the verdict of the Minister. And it seems that the Land Board did at any rate do the right thing in sending the case on to the Minister. The great plank of any Ciovernment policy must be the land policy, and as we are now in the throes of this question it is far the best that the Minister should have the making or marring of the policy he is advocating. According to all leaseholds the lessee has the right to transfer under certain conditions, and under the Land for Settlements Act it says no transfers shall be granted unless "in the opinion of the Land Board,'' some extraordinary circumstances occur. Then the case shall be submitted to the Minister for his approval or otherwise, as he thinks fit. Well, Sir, it appears from the facts as reported of the last Land Board meeting that the first tenant was examined by the Canterbury Land Board. This should be a sufficient guarantee that the man was eligible to go to the ballot. Unfortunately for him, misfortune overtakes him, and in hopes of complying with the conditions he is granted leave to take in a partner. Misfortune again comes along, and the partner's wife is seized with sickness, necessitating two operations, and putting the question of living and undertaking the duties of a farmer's wife in the back blocks out of the question altogether. Then, what may seem a strange coincidence, the purchaser of the goodwill is one of the unlucky candidates at the ballot for the very group on which he is now anxious to make a home for his wife and family. Now, bn;, here is the point, and" where I tnmk the common sense view was taken of the case. We will, for a moment suppose the transfer was refused. Then the section would have had to-be re-advertised and offered to the public; all costs and all improvements would be added to the original costs of the section. Then exactly the same thing might occur. On the other

hand, a man in the prime of life, the father of three ov four children, is at once placed on the land and no haphazard chance of a bicycle agent drawing the section a second time. These. Sir, are the plain facts to he placed before the Minister, and as the Post remarks, it will give him a rate chance of striking a blow, not- at the Crown tenants, but to put the final nail into his xjolitical coffin.

LEASEHOLDER