THE KING COUNTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14845, 23 November 1911, Page 6

THE KING COUNTRY.

Sir Joseph Waed has : commenced his political campaign in Auckland Province - at Taumar \'., with his usual laborious explanation 'of the unfailing-perfections of his Administration.. ' ; Figures arid statements,

claims and promises}, are., an .unvarying part of the Ministerial stock-in-trade, but ;it is only the prejudiced partisan who can look around the King Country and th'en assert that we have the best of all possible Governments. < It is true that the King Country is at last beginning to feel the effect of the incessant agitation for its settlement' carried on by the Herald for so many .years; but although the ; Government has tardily and reluctantly yielded to the gathering strength of public opinion it has done so as little and as superficially as possible. The Main Trunk Line, constructed at great national expense, still, runs for , many miles through practically unsettled country and for many miles on- either hand land which should be carrying many thousands of thriving agriculturists is generally waste. The. form of lease under which part of the Native Lands is being opened up is unattractive to the man who wishes to make a home for himself and for ' his children; the country will sooner or later be confronted by a" demand for its conversion into some tenure which.will protect the European occupier against the gross extortions of a law-created hereditary aristocracy. . The prosperity which of recent years has been experienced by some of the Main Line townships, is exemplary of what can be done by allowing lacked : up land to be used; for if this prosperity accrues from an utterly inadequate treatment of the question what might not be expected from: an administrative system which would fill the King-Country with farms and townships 1 The Government has been in office for twenty years and from the commencement has done its best to lock the King Country against settlement. The records show that it not only attempted to prevent private individuals from., acquiring Native Lands, but that it legislatively prohibited further Crown acquisitions; also that when the embargo was abolished and when native owners were eager and willing to sell to the Crown, the purchasing of Native Lands by the Crown was deliberately checked. * Nor is there to-day any honest and genuine determination on the part of the Government to amend its ways. Native blocks are being shelved by the short-term leasing system which should be purchased by the Crown and thrown open to true settlement. In short, the primitive condition of the King Country is a standing indictment of the Native Land Policy of the Government, as Sir Joseph .Ward probably realised when he arranged that the Main Line expresses should go through it in the dark. .