SIR JULIUS VOGEL ON THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5667, 29 May 1879, Page 3

SIR JULIUS VOGEL ON THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

(From the Melbourne Argus, May 6.)

Sir Julius Vogel has contributed to the Princeton Pcricw, an American periodical of a high class, a rapid sketch of the Australian colonies, of their resources, their present condition, and their future prospects. The colonies could have no more competent critic. If in their corporate capacity they have ever sighed with Arthur Clough—

“ Oh, for some friend, or more than friend severe. To make me know myself, and make me fear the wish may be taken to be gratified in the person of the ex-Premier and present AgentGeneral of New Zealand. He is an old Victorian. He lived and worked amongst us. His grasp of mind and his abilities have been tolerably well demonstrated, and with his brilliant and so far successful New Zealand policy in view, he must be placed first amongst progressive statesmen in the colonies. Lookerson, when they are at all qualified, proverbially see most of the game, and we may turn, therefore, to what Sir Julius Vogel has to say of Victoria, with an assurance of finding something both to interest and' instruct us. The writer devotes himself principally to our laud question. No Australian colony, he says, ever had so great an opportunity of settling population on the lands as Victoria, because a fine race of men of a hardy type were drawn to her shores by the attraction of the goldfields. At first there was the difficulty of getting the land unlocked, and when that was overcome, they were unlocked too much, and it admits of argument whether the latter stage has not been worse for the country than the former. The rock wo have been wrecked upon iu this respect is, Sir Julius Vogel urges, “ cheap land.” A fixed price for land of every class, varying twentyfold in value, must always be ridiculous, and, to add to the foolishness, we named a price absurdly low. “ There has ensued,” writes Sir Julius Vogel, “ what was to be expected. ■ “ The selector could make money by reselling the land more easily than by working. The large pastoral leaseholders, ever on the watch to convert into freeholds their .conditional holdings, were always ready to buy at a coneiderable profit. The free selector had only to fulfil the bare terms of residence to be assured of making money by selling, his holding as soon as he could get a title from the Crown. All this is as .'wrong in theory as disastrous in practice. No one has a right to get land from the State at less than its value as unimproved land. The Australasian colonies were settled after the theories of Gibbon Wakefield, but one of this great man’s, most cogent principles has been ignored. It was better, he said, to exact a good and sufficient price for the land, even though the money was literally to. be thrown into the sea, than to part with it for an insufficient price. The only sound guarantee for the cultivation of land is that which is provided by the purchaser paying such a price as would make it impossible for him to afford to lose the interest on his money by keeping the land unused.” ,

It is unnecessary for us to express approval of these contentions. We have used the same arguments before, and have urged, with Sir Julius Vogel, that the only profit the selector should be allowed to anticipate is the profit he can make by cultivation, and that to add the further profit obtainable by acquiring land at a low price and disposing of it at its market value, is to unsettle settlement. The error, we admit, was natural. Our politicians were led astray by the example of those American States where the land, having no natural value —being worthless until it is improved, and being also unoccupied—can be almost given away with impunity. No one but bona fide settlers will take such land if they have to pay any rent or any taxes, but in Australia the case is .wholly different. The laud has a high natural value for pastoral purposes, and to sell it much below that value, and in enormous quantities quantities far m excess of any possible agricultural demand is worse than useless, for to no other than pastoral purposes can the excess possibly go. What we have to complain of to this day is that our politicians shut their eyes to the error they committed ; they push their policy to further extremes, and when the natural and inevitable results become apparent, they cry “treachery” and “ revenge.” The land policy which Sir Julius Vogel commends to our notice is simplicity itself. It is, “land to be open to the squatter” (we presume purchaser is meant) “whenever he wants it, at a price which will prove profitable to the cultivator, but exceedingly risky to the mere speculator.” That is to say, our national estate, or what remains of it, should be classified; a fair agricultural value should be fixed upon each class, and that price should be insisted upon. “People”- (to use the words of Sir Julius Vegel) “ would then learn to look upon the land not as a speculative commodity, but as the source and fountain of legitimate gain to those who devote themselves to extracting from it its wealth.” We should sell less land, but the Treasury would receive more for what was sold. And we should have the knowledge. that what we did sell would be turned to the best account, and this state of things would be far -more healthy than sacrificing a million and a half of acres per annnm ostensibly to encourage agriculture, but with the full knowledge that there is not capital to farm such an area, nor men to cultivate it. We quote the utterances of Sir Julius Vogel with pleasure, because our land question is about to be re-opened and reconsidered, and it is desirable therefore to give prominence to the conclusions arrived at by a politician who has shown himself emphatically to be a “friend of the people.” In one matter we must dissent from our

critic. He assumes that the protective duties in force here were cunningly devised by the squatters, the landowners, and 'he land speculators, who were well content that the national estate should be played ducks and drakes with, and that the Treasury should be tilled by taxes which fell upon the poor man, instead of being replenished by the proceeds of the land sales. The people, he says, “ fell into the trap. The landowners appeared to reluctantly sanction these duties. They, however, did sanction them, and obtained for themselves the opportunity of obtaining extensive freeholds.” The assumption is natural. It is almost incredible that the working classes should have allowed themselves to be duped as they have been by their agitators and demagogues, for the direct effect of fostering industries in the towns was to withdraw from the country districts the population and the capital upon which the agricultural exjooriment depended for success. But wo arc sure everyone in Victoria will admit that the landed interest of Victoria never countenanced the protective craze, that the opposition to it was bona fide, and that the mischief was worked altogether by “the people” themselves. But if Sir Julius Vogel has here fallen into an error of detail, it is difficult to dissent from his general conclusion. The net result of our laud aud our fiscal legislation has been, he says, to arouse class jealousies and class suspicions, and to occasion class wrongs to an extent unknown elsewhere. Instead of all parties working to advance the colony, the majority are inclined to devote their energies to threateuing and attacking the rich, who they are easily persuaded are their enemies, and thus capital is frightened aud enterprise is checked. Thus the Victorians, says Sir Julius Vogel, “ have allowed the colony which was first in the race, and which possessed in some respects unequalled advantages, to lag behind until other colonies have fast been making up the distance which separated them. They have brought themselves to a condition which is truly pitiable. They do little or nothing to encourage immigration, They believe in keeping the country for themselves ; they suspect each other, and they depend too much on the Government for the success of their schemes of life.” These are hard words, but they are not unkindly spoken, and, in the best interests of Victoria, they well deserve to be taken seriously to heart.