FREEHOLDER OR TENANT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12071, 15 September 1902, Page 4

FREEHOLDER OR TENANT.

! Tar amendment of Mr. Massey, to ha moved when the House goes into committee upon the Land Bill, will draw the line between those who are for the freehold system and those who are against it. Its intention is to establish " option of purchase," at four per cent., as the alternative to cash purchase in the land settlement system of the colony. If carried it will frustrate the persistent attempts of the enemies of freehold to take undue and unwarrantable advantage of the present law, as they did at Kawhia. But it will make a clear and unmistakable issue, which cannot fail to triumph in the end- Foi the political revival which is going on throughout the farming districts has been caused by the persistent disregard of agricultural interests by the present Administration and its supporters in Parliament. One of the most noticeable features of its policy is the blind and pernicious attempt to substitute a land system under which every acre of agricultural land taken up by pioneering settlers would be heavily mortgaged in perpetuity, to the State, for the system under which, by hard work and thrift, a settler may pay off his indebtedness and have no dead weight to carry in hard times. The State has so little to gain by this perpetual mortgage system, and farmers have so much to lose, that it has always been a mystery why such an attempt should be made, unless it be to afford some plausible pretext for future confiscation. Mr. Massey's amendment proposes nothing more deadly to human rights than to give the mortgageburdened farmer the right to pay off

that mortgage if ho can. It would be hard to find a proposition more reasonable or one which ought to appeal more to men who profess to look upon the mortgagee with aversion. That it will be opposed by the Government and probably rejected by the House shows how necessary it is for the farmers to act unitedly and independently if they hope to secure the simplest justice.