THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1903. INDUCEMENTS TO SETTLERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12317, 8 July 1903, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1903. INDUCEMENTS TO SETTLERS.

The ■■persistent claim made by the Government that it lias been ..;.■. the champion of land settlement waschallenged yesterday in the House by Mr.; Kirkbridc, the new member for Manukau and an old settler himself. .. Nobody would wish to discourage the Administration from turning over a new leaf and making the opening up of oui Crown and Native Lands; "the Alpha and -the Omega" of this important phase of its policy. But it would be ridiculous, were it not so serious a matter, to witness the official pretensions advanced from meeting-platform and Parliamentary bench . in the very face of the published records of the Lands Department. The number of new .settlers placed on the lands of the colony was never more disproportionate to the population of the colony bhajrii it has been under the present regime. It was actually ten per cent, less in 1899-1900 than in 1989-90, and it reached its lowest ebb in 1897-98. The returns of the last decade of the century.; "are by* no means pleasant reading to those who ; have long realised the necessity for that increase of population declared in the Governor's Speech to be so desirable. Commencing in '90-'9l the total number of selectors of land under settlement conditions for each successive year of the decade are given by the Yean- Book as: 1881, 1953, 2578, 2454, 1988, 2504, 1735, 1539, 1953, 1803. Our readers will observe the steady falling off after the middle of the period in spite of the increased prices and abundant market secured for every important form of agricultural produce excepting butter and in spite of tlie vast sums spent in acquiring Southern estates for closer settlement.- The record is nothing to be proud of, but the very reverse.; It is so bad that even Mr. Secldon has been compelled to acknowledge its weakness by a change of policy and by a display of energy in the surveying and opening of Northern lands which ought to have been undertaken ten years ago. As Mr. Kirkbride stoutly insisted, under the old provincial system the land laws were liberal. This was demonstrated by that great stream of settlers- who laid the foundations and erected the superstructure of our thriving Colony. Then a. poor mar could get land if he had * jhe courage to pioneer it. Lately one of the most difficult

things in the world has been for any man to obtain a selection from the millions of Government acres lying idle and locked up in the North Island. ' •

But apart from the amazing locking-up policy of the Administration, which is inferentially asserted to have been inspired by a paternal determination to keep the adventurous young men of the South at home with their mothers and to discourage them from seeking the perils and temptations of the foreign North Island, we have to bear in mind that however attractive leasehold agricultural land may be to city theorists, the British agriculturalist who casts his eyes-to colonial fields wants the freehold. This Canada offers to him, and as a consequence he is pouring in thousands into the great North-West, where for six months in every year the country is 'under snow. And though we may often him a lease for 999 years, pointing out to him that it will last his time and that of many succeeding generations, we cannot prevent him hearing the dishonest assertion, openly made by men who have the ear of the Premier, that this lease should be revaluated. It is folly to offer an unpopular tenure while men who are popularly supposed to pull, the legislative wires ,

declare freely their intention of violating it. " The unpopularity of the tenure depends, as Mr. Seddon ought to know, not merely upon its name, but upon the subordinate position' in which it places the great yeoman class. Perpetual rent, or perpetual mortgage, whichever we choose to term it, is not an inducement to the land-hungry immigrant whose ambition it is to stand, before he dies, on a plot of land wherein his life's work has been concentrated and his life's savings invested. This ambition may be a foolish one. The man ought possibly to prefer Government bonds for his savings, or to spend his earnings cheei'fully as he goes along with an approving eye upon old age pensions. But we have to take men as we find them, and the settler whom the Government', says it wishes to attract wants freehold, not rentbold. He would ,be willing to pay the price we set and thankful for liberal conditions as to time of payment. But until we make the race anew and compound the British, people of some Other instincts and sentiments, we can never make leasehold attractive to the land-settler, particularly when in this new and virgin country he has to submit to the.dictate of a Land Board as to what he shall sow.

Without depreciating the magnificent resources of our Canadian fellow colonists, we think it may be fairly stated that we possess the better land, the better climate and the more generally attractive geographical condition's. They are more contiguous in leagues and days to the Mother Country, but such advantages are not now the supreme factors they once Were in migration. All colonists are in the habit of exaggerating the blessings with which their particular colony is endowed. Is it not an Australian boast that in the lonely continent a man can sleep under the stars for ten months in the year without getting bedewed 1 And was it not a Canadian who pointed out that his was the only British colony where any small family could kill its own winter meat and eat the whole carcase fresh 'I But we have, on behalf of New Zealand, the favour of every visitor and every traveller. It is no exaggeration to say that the consensus' of external opinion isthat we possess me most favoured colony in the Empire. We New Zealanders may be, : and doubtless a.re, prejudiced. But the unpreju- j diced give our country a certificate | of attractiveness, of geniality, of fertility, of beauty, of general fitness,, given to no other country in the world. Then why do we not attract settlers ? We are attracting tourists by the thousands, but not the British settler. He goes to Canada, to South Africa, to the Argentine, to the United .: States—freehold countries— not to New Zealand. Nor is the cause far to seek if we frankly admit the facts. Our lands have been locked up; the ballot , system is entirely unsatisfactory; and to the would-be ; settler . an. unchallenged and understandable freehold is not to be passed by in favour of a doubtful and complicated leasehold.