THE VICTORIA TEMPERANCE SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9241, 19 December 1888, Page 5

THE VICTORIA TEMPERANCE SETTLEMENT.

A FEW WORDS TO .MINISTERS. Mr. T. B. Hill writes :—" I have just) returned from the Village Settlements at Firewood Creek and Akatea, and iiuvo seen

in tho papers that Mr. Richardson had said : ' lip was not favourablo to village settlements, because it is useless placing men on land in districts where there is no one to employ themalso his colleague, Mr. Fisher, when speaking to tho unemployed at Christchurch, checkcd them for telling the truth when speaking of absentee landowners. Now, sir, I should with your permission like to enlighten these gentlemen. Now, tho abovenamed villago settlements were planted where they arc with the object of being mutually beneficial to a large temperance settlement, which Mr. A. Claydon went home to England to organise. How was it it did nob eventuate? Simply because all the best lands that were anyway accessible were in tho hands of absentees and speculators. And who is to blame for this? Why, the Government. All honour to Sir George Grey and Mr. Ballance, who intended to pass an Act to re-acquire these lands ; and, had they done so, what is now a howling wilderness would havo been the Victoria Temperance Settlement, filled with industrious settlers, able and willing and glad to avail themselves of all the spare labour the villago settlers had to dispose of, and tho Minister of Lands would not havo had to make the complaint he did and tho cry, "Speculators, landsharks, and absentees" would soon become a thing of the past. Neither would Mr. Richardson have to complain of village sottlors being placed on land with no one but the Government to employ them. The villago settlement scheme will yet, I hope, provo one of the best outlays the Government of this country has over inaugurated.