FREEHOLDER OR TENANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12069, 12 September 1902, Page 4

FREEHOLDER OR TENANT.

The reality of the danger which threatens the freehold system in this colony is shown by the amending Land Bill containing an original clause that the Government might open any land on lease in perpetuity only and by Major Steward' 3 intended amendment that leases-in-perpetuity shall be revaluated every 21 years. It is true that the former was struck out and that the latter is extremely unlikely to bo carried, but it is serious when the Administration makes no secret of its sympathy with lease-in-perpetiuty only and when any member of longstanding, although of little political weight, openly attempts the conversion of these leases into a colonial '•'Ulster right." There are very fewif there is one—electorates, in the colony where the freehold system would not now be triumphantly vindicated at a test election. But electors ignore the manner in which their representatives use authority and power. They seem to imagine, because thqy themselves are not directly attacked, that these insidious advances against our land system are meaningless. It is urgent time that this state of indifference were awakened from. If an electorate is deliberately against the freeholder, if it is in favour of upsetting our entire land system and transforming the country into an Egypt, wherein the State Pharaoh exacts what rent he will from every occupier, by all means let it have v representative to its way of thinking. But if it has no. such feeling, why should it keep

in Parliament any man who (Joes his utmost, at every conceivable opportunity, to suppress tho freeholder and to turn the land-title into an archaic curiosity !