WELLINGTON NEWS NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9186, 16 October 1888, Page 5

WELLINGTON NEWS NOTES.

[BY TELK^RVrK. —OWN CORRESPONDENT.] Wellington, Monday. MOVEMENTS OF MINISTERS. The Hon. Mr. Fisher. Minister of Education, returned to Wellington yesterday, from the South. LAND AND SETTLEMENT. The Minister of Lands informed mo today that the applications for land upon "Settlement Conditions " have become so numerous as to negative the allegations of an "exodus" from New Zealand upon an extensive scale. For some of the sections offered for sale there have been as many as ninety applicants. In the course of a short conversation with him to-day, lie said there is a great deal of misapprehension about these land sales. People fancy the numerous applications mean a competition for the land. It is nothing of the sort. There can be no competition. When two persons desire the same section, there is a ballot : it is the same whether two or a hundred persons desire the same section. The land in such cases is ballotted for. The present sales are under the Land Act of 1887. When the land is opened for selection the price is fixed, and it will be sold for that price, neither more nor less. The Government gets no more for the land if a hundred persons want it instead of one. They get no less if there be but one applicant. I have received letters and seen statements printed which convince me that this is not understood. There will be ii sale in a few days, and the number of applicants for the sections would almost suggest "a land boom,' if it were not that we hear and know so much of the depression which has been severely and recently felt. These applicants are for the most part struggling people. Ido not know of any exodus from the colony that would not include a number of these people if such allegations had any real foundation. One does not like to assume the air of a prophet in forecasting the future event upon reliable data, but it is safe to say that these applications for land upon strictly " settlement conditions'' afford a sign that those who know most about the land in this colony have the strongest desire to possess it upon conditions that will ensure its cultivation.