LAND SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4407, 13 July 1901, Page 6

LAND SETTLEMENT.

SQUATTER-RIDDEN HAWKE’S BAY. Special to the “Times.” NAPIER, July 12. Land settlement continues to be an absorbing topic here. Probably at no period of the province’s history have the people so grasped the importance and urgency of this question as at the present time. It is discussed in railway carriages, at public meetings and in private conversation, to say nothing of the ( flood of correspondence which pours into the columns of the press. It has been asked if this agitation for land is sincere. The sincerity of the people need not be doubted. The only cause of complaint is that the land is not being cut up half quickly enough to satisfy the hunger. It is felt that if Hawke’s Bay is to go ahead like other parts of the colony. Government aid must be ixUvoked to put human beings where sheep now leisurely browse. And the necessity is urgent,, for Hawke’s Bay is going back instead of progressing, and we also want to know what we are getting in return for electing Messrs Hall and Fraser to support Mr Soddon’s policy. Captain E. S.'Grogan’s advocacy of the ultra-Conservative view of the land question having been strongly combated, and his algebraical equations twisted out of shape, the gallant Cape toCairo explorer now returns to the attack, this time with his elephant gunloaded in both barrels. The alleged anarchical tendency, imperceptibly, yet swiftly, drifting towards the “ slimy abyss,” is repulsive to him; and he sees the people of this country already dazed by an ever-increasing debt, watching the issues with a tolerance bred of reckless disregard for the future. The compulsory clause of the Land Act is villainy to him, and he contends that there is no more “ devilish- form of villainy than legislative rapine.” The creeping tide has, h e wildly says, absorbed the absentee landlord, and in one short year has clutched the widow’s portion and the citizen’s hack-yard. “Finally, if God is not to he invoked in a question of right or wrong, and the policeman slumbers, who is to be invoked; for afar off I hear the swelling ory, ‘We want, and will have,’ and anon comes the faint echo, ‘When you have got all, we, too, shall want.’ Thus the mocking cycles of man’s adjustment.” r fo which might be added that to stem the tide of popular clamour for. close settlement would he like trying to drive back the Pacific Ocean. Meantime, the people want both the Land Purchase Board and the Government to burry up.