THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1907. THE PREMIER'S SPEECH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13397, 28 January 1907, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1907. THE PREMIER'S SPEECH.

The greater part of the Premier's speech, at the Royal Albert Hall, was devoted to an exposition of the views of the Government upon the Land Question, as it is affected both by the Land Bill and by the Native Lands Commission. We may, therefore, fairly confine our comment to that important subject, avoiding reference to the matters of Imperial concern in which we. are all in cordial and hearty agreement with Sir Joseph Ward. That the Premier takes with him to London the unqualified good wishes of the province and colony, and the absolute confidence of his fellow-colo-nists as their representative at the Colonial Conference, we have heretofore stated ; and we can therefore freely criticise the land policy of his Administration without any fear of sounding a discordant note at a moment when he is about to set out upon a truly national mission. In his absence, moreover, he will have ample opportunity to review at leisure the exceedingly complicated Land Bill which was submitted last session to the House of Representatives and which was very wisely left over until next session in order that members might discern the mind of the. country during the recess. The effect of this suspension of final decision is already to be seen in the expressed refusal ofthe Premier to regard the Bill as one upon which his Administration will stand or fall, and we may hope that further consideration may lead to such a reconstruction of the measure, as will result in a sounder and more practicable legislative enactment. He assured his audience on Saturday night that there was no intention in the Land Bill to take the freehold away from the people, and defied critics to point out such a proposal. But Sir Joseph Ward is too old a politician, not to say too experienced a statesman, to have committed himself, in the Bill, to an unveiled attack upon a form of tenure which is believed in by

the overwhelming majority of the electors of the colony. What he lias permitted himself to be drawn into—in the hopeless endeavour to conciliate the extremists of his party—is an insidious, rather than an open, attack upon the Freehold principle. If he were himself criticising the measure from Opposition benches he would be the very first to point out that if it became law the. Leasehold principle would have made great strides while the Freehold principle would have correspondingly lost ground. For the Bill proposes, primarily, to replace the system under which the Crown has exercised its incontestable right of resuming freehold land at a fair valuation by one under which the freeholder is io be compelled to divest himself, at his own risk, of land which lie acquired without any such divestment condition attaching. Then we have the extension of this scheme by which two classes of freeholders are set up. a small class allowed to hold up to £50.000 in value and a great class allowed to hold up to £15,000 in value. Obviously, these limit values are arbitrary and changeable. They may be raised or lowered from time to time, according to the whim of any passing Parliament, so that if the Bill becomes law no man can lie certain that lie may not at any time he compelled to divest himself of [and which he thought lawfully his property and that, not at a valuation, but. at any price which he can obtain at what is literally a forced sail?. Then again, we have under the guise of "endowments," a scheme which will prevent a. single acre of Crown Land from becoming freehold in the future. This scheme particularly affects Auckland Province and the North Island, and would have tin' effect of populating great districts by rack-rented tenant-far-mers and no freeholders at all. Does

Sir Joseph Ward seriously ask us to think that there is in all this no attack upon the Freehold principle Mr. McNab, when he made his tour of the Manukau electorate in the vain effort to convince the farming community that he was the only friend they had in Parliament, declared that the Government would stand.or fall on the Land Bill. Sir Joseph Ward more convincingly assures us that '• not one of my colleagues is what I may term pledged to the Bill line for line." And ne further tells us that the endowment proposals will be formed into a separate Bill, and that if the limitation clauses are not carried the Government will accept the Opposition proposal for a land tax. We must confess to being somewhat astounded by this development of party government. It would seem that the Government had no policy but to retain office, and that it did not greatly care what measures it passed as long as nothing interfered with this entirely modern ambition. We are not surprised, however, that the endowment proposals should be separated from the Land Bill proper, for they only confuse the tenure question, as they were undoubtedly intended to do when they were forced upon Sir Joseph Ward by his Leaseholder suporters. He tells us that education and other charges upon the State are so increasing that some provision should .be made for meeting them in the future ; but lie does not tell us. what he is too good a business man not to know, that increased population and increased productivity are the natural and sufficient provision for all future national charges. The Freehold is. beyond all question, the form of tenure, which secures the best use and the greatest productivity of land, and to propose provision for the future, by subjecting whole districts—in the North, be it remarked —to the blighting influence of leasehold is to defeat the nominal purpose of the endowment scheme. Small local land endowments, assigned to specific local uses and surrounded by freehold binds whose occupiers set the pace of development, work fairly well in urban and suburban districts, though the environs of Auckland preach an eloquent sermon upon the fact that even these are not an unmixed blessing. But great territorial " national endowments." which are only the imposition of a, national leasehold system thinly cloaked under a specious name, and the utmost effect of which could only be to reduce national taxation by an infinitesimal percentage and at the cost of inferior, development and reduced production, are a, very different matter. Sir Joseph Ward spoke of the remarkable growth of Auckland City, due to the increasing settlement of the North. Does he imagine for one moment that it would have grown in this fashion and would have yielded its millions of pounds sterling to the national revenues if the provincial land tenure had been Leasehold ? He cannot think this. Then why does he propose to place whole counties under a demoralising and pernicious system 1 We agree entirely that what is wanted is settlement and that what are not wanted are great estates. If his Commission helps to break up the Native Lands and if a Land Bill helps to further settlement, we shall all be pleased. But what we claim is this : that the small freehold can be encouraged and safeguarded without implanting in the colony a tenantry system which has been found bad all over the world, whether the landlord is a public or a private one. And we challenge Sir Joseph Ward to point out in the Land Bill a clause or a line which encourages tin 1 freehold system as against that State-landlordism which is the ideal of his Leasehold supporters.