THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 4, 1891.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8557, 4 May 1891, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, MAY 4, 1891.

In the next session of Parliament the Government are to make several important proposals in regard to land. It is believed that they will ask for powers to enable them to take compulsorily areas of land suitable for cutting up into small holdings, to have these laid off in such holdings, and to let them for an annual payment, the State to continue the owner for ever. Then Ministers mean to take a new departure of some nature yet unexplained, in regard to native lands, by which the State shall come in as a kind of middleman, acting as agent and factor for the land, collecting the rents,'and paying them over to the natives. All these proposals will come up for discussion in due time. In t>lo meantime it is interesting to notice that in England the subject of providing land for small holdings is engaging attention from men of all parties. The discussions taking place there must be instructive to us here. The circumstances of the two countries are, however, very different. In England it has been almost impossible to obtain land for small holdings; here that difficulty can scarcely be said to exist. The difficulty existing in England has, however, lately been considerably modified. The price of land has fallen, and estates have been placed in the market which a few years ago it was thought would never come to be in that position. The objection, however, to giving the State, or any public body, a power of compulsory purchase has been so great that Mr. Jesse Collings, M.P., who has been the leader of the small holding movement, has now left it out of his Bill, which was introduced into the House of Commons on March 13, and was read a second time without any opposition.

Tbo objects of a Bill to create small holdings are somewhat different in England from here. The objects there are to benefit the agricultural labourer, to stop the depopulation of the country districts, to make country life more attractive, to infuse an element of hope into the lives of the labouring population, and to open up to them a career not necessarily ending in the workhouse. Some of these objects are true also for us. In Mr. Collings' present Bill it is proposed that some local body (a district council or county council) should have the power of letting land for small holdings. A portion of the money is to be paid down by the occupier, and the remainder with interest, left as a perpetual quit rent. The money to acquire the land is to be obtained by the local body from a grant from the Exchequer, and the local authority, by charging more interest than it paid to the Imperial Exchequer, has a margin for its own profit. That investment would pay off the Treasury, and the local authority would be in receipt of quit rents*for the benefit of the whole body of the

ratepayers. Thus, ifc will be seen that tho plan proposed in England is very ditTbi-enb from what wo have here. In Ntiw Zealand the State is to be the direct landlord, and flatters itself that it would got all the " unearned increment." Tho English Bill provides that tho local authority, in selling a small holding, should require one-fourth of the purchase money to be paid on the completion of the sale, and that the other three-fourths shall remain a debt for ever. The Bill also empowers the local authority, by giving twelve months' notice at any time to repurchase the holding, i£ for any reason the land could be used more profitably to the public otherwise than as a small holding.

In moving the second reading of his Bill, Mr. Collings went over the usual arguments in favour of small holdings, contending that under the system of perpetual rent the small holder was safe from the temptations of the moneylender. He said that his plan would create a numerous class who would be rooted on the soil, who would be, to all intents and purposes, freeholders, and who would be regarded as such. Mr. Chaplin, President of the Board of Agriculture, who assented to the second reading on behalf of the Government, said that he saw no sufficient reason for giving the local authority power to take back the land. He thought there was nothing more likely to deter intending purchasers of small holdings than the two conditions, by the lirsb of which the estate would never be free of three-fourths of the purchase money ; and by the second, of which the local authority would have power at any time to resume possession of the land. The chief inducement to: purchase would be the assurance to purchasers that they had acquired a property which no one could take away from them. The object of Parliament, he contended, in this proceeding, is to create a race of owners, to endeavour to reproduce the German class, a race dependent upon no local authority nor landlord, but solely upon themselves. He also pointed out that if the local authorities took upon themselves the vicissitudes of a landlord's career, they could not avoid the incidental losses ; that in bad seasons great pressure for reductions of rent would be made, and that if in the interest of the ratepayers of the local body this pressure were resisted, they would become most unpopular, and their conduct would be contrasted with the great consideration always shown by large private owners. Mr. Chaplin, who in his speech showed a mastery of the whole subject, next insisted that the land must be good, remarking:—"There was no greater mistake than to plant a poor man upon land of inferior quality, and ask him to get a living out of it." Mr. Mr. J. Chamberlain made an excellent speech, in which he condemned the proposal to have a perpetual rent. He said, '" It would not be wise to reserve three - fourths of the value for the quit rent, because, if there were any further fall in the price of land the quit rent would become the rack rent, and then there would be an agitation for the reduction of the rent —an agitation which might become dangerous, because in the course of time the origin of rent of this kind was apt to be lost sight of, and people believed it was a tax upon their industry.' .

It is one of the political necessities of the British race, in England and in the colonies, that the mass of the people should receive an interest in the soil of the country they live in. Hitherto in England, the nobility and the great order of landed gentry have monopolised the land ; but this muse be changed, and is being changed. But the order of yeomeu, of small holders, must be created by the natural and rightful process of making these men the owners of the freehold, and not merely tenants of the State. Mr. Chaplin and Mr. Chamberlain, who showed the danger of the holders of the land being made tenants of the State at a perpetual rent, might have obtained powerful arguments from the history of New Zealand. The moment that a body of State tenants were created in this colony, then at once commenced an agitation for a reduction. And hitherto such agitations have been invariably successful. The rental exacted gets to be looked upon, not as rent, but as an odious form of taxation. When the settlements were being founded north of Auckland the people were openly told that the law at present was that they must pay a small rent yearly, but that they could easily by a little political agitation convert their holdings into freeholds. It would be far better that the Government should make the land freehold at once. As for the action of the Government in endeavouring to prevent the Maoris from parting with their land, and in becoming agents between them and European cultivators, it has simply no chance of success. It would be a pity if it had.