THE LOCKED-UP LANDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12968, 11 September 1905, Page 4

THE LOCKED-UP LANDS.

We give in another column a brief summary of the Maori Land statistics contained in the report of the Land Commission. From this official source, which cannot be accused of any desire to throw discredit up-' on the Administration, it is to be learned that Auckland province alone contains the enormous area of over 3,400,000 acres of Maori Land fit for settlement, in addition to pearly 800,000 acres classified as unfit for settlement. As our special commissioner points out, this means that 17,000 farms—each of which would carry an industrious and prosperous settler-family and afford employment to not less than 50,000 persons on the land alone—are locked up. We may go even further than this, and point out that owing to the superiority of the Maori Landsfor the Maori averagely kept the best land, even' though his blocks include a small proportion of mountain and swamp—the agricultural produce of Auckland province could easily be more than doubled if the Maori Lands were thrown open to settlement, after sufficient had been reserved for the actual occupation of the Maori remnant. Hawke's Bay land, much of which is really within the Auckland area, Taranaki land and Wellington land, add some two and a-half millions of settleable Maori country to the idle tracts from which our settlers are debarred in Auckland province. Comment should be- superfluous. Unless we are foolish enough to imagine that cities can subsist on air, and roads bo built by scattered settlers, and. railways bo profitably maintained on broken promises, we must recognise that only by agricultural production is commercial prosperity and financial stability made possible, and that any Administration which blocks and prevents the cultivation of unused land is deserving of unanimous public condemnation.