Daily Circulation, 1500. The Oamaru Mail FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1891.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 5082, 18 September 1891, Page 2

Daily Circulation, 1500. The Oamaru Mail FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1891.

Attempts are being made to allay Mr M'Kenzie's indignation at the treatment his Land Bill has received at the hands of the Legislative Council, by impressing upon him the necessity for " approaching the Council in a friendly spirit." What Messrs Rolleston, Hall, and Richardson want is to see Mr M'Kenzie kiss the rod that their friends in the " Lords" have laid across his back, and it is evidently hoped in Conservative circles that Mr M'Kenzie will do this with becoming humility. If Mr M'Kenzie's political amour i ropr•- only were involved in his prostration at the feet of his enemies, the matter might not be one of very great national concern. But there is infinitely more than this at stake. The question that has to be decided is whether or not the will of the majority as represented in the Government's Land Bill shall be crushed out under the heel of Conservative tyranny Whether, indeed, a Government set up by the people is to be subservient to an irresponsible body who glory in tlieir unsusceptibility to advanced thought and action ? If the will of the people is to be respected ; if the progress of the colony is to be the principal motive ; and if honest dealing in connection with the State lands, so that all may have an equal chance of obtaining a foothold in the colony, is to be enforced as the only means of combating the criminal acquisitiveness of monopolists —then there must be no surrender on the part of the Government. Should the Government, as the guardians of the public interest, parley with the enemy, with a view to compromise, whilst they have the power to protect those interests ? They were not placed in office to carry out a policy that would be agreeable to the Council, but a policy that should necessarily be in antagonism to the class of which the Council are the representatives. The Land Bill was the result of the charter that was granted to them by a people disgusted and alarmed at the lawlessness that had characterised the land transactions of a section of colonists who are hand in glove with the majority of the Council. It is evident that representative government and the Council cannot exist side by side. The colony has pronounced that legislation must be passed to prevent the acquisition of land by fraud. The Council pretend, though fraud was proved and admitted, that there has never been any such thing, and scornfully laugh at the endeavors of the Government to check it by the imposition of substantial penalties. The Council hold that there should be the utmost freedom in regard to the acquisition of land, and that false declarations are perfectly justifiable if necessary to the accomplishment of the designs of the class they represent. They, moreover, contend cash sales, and chafe at the imposition of any restrictions as to the amount of laud that any person may purchase. In ?rder to neutralise the Government's attempt to limit the area that any person may hold they have inserted a clause in the Bill that a man may purchase land in behalf of any of his children, though they be under 17 years of age, and excised the provision that 110 person may purchase more than one pastoral lease. If there lias been no fraud, and if there is 110 intention to monopolise land on the part of their friends, what need is there for the Council to exhibit such annoyance at the proposal to institute penalties to check such wrong-doing ? The institution of such penalties implies 110 offence to men whose intentions are honorable, any more than the retention of capital punishment should be viewed as an insult to humanity. It would lie deemed the height of folly to obliterate capital punishment from our Statutes, if such punishment be deemed necessary as a preventive of homicide, 011 the ground that there is 110 intention to commit such a crime. But, as we have already implied, the Council's excision of the penal clauses of the Act is intended to leave a free field for the operation of capitalists by whatever means they chose to adopt for the gratification of their land greed. As the Council have left the Bill, it is several steps backward in land administration. It is the worst Land Bill that the colony of New Zealand lias ever known, and that is saying a great deal. It would, if made law, legalise a system of territorial spoliation that would check the progress of even the United States. It is too late in the day for little New Zealand to be utterly careless of howher lands are held. It is too late for her to endow the father of a family with thousands of acres of the choicest of her soil 011 the plea that he has a large number of children, or to legalise the purchase of Crown land by a married woman, simply because a man s wife has been found to be a convenient instrument by which to increase her husband's landed possessions under the dummy system. It is too late for her to permit a small coterie of capitalists to monopolise the great bulk of her pastoral lands under the present system by which one man may hold any number of runs. Yet these are the retrogressive principles that the Council insist upon thrusting down the throats of the Government and the people of New Zealand, whether they will have them or not. The position is a serious one. Is New Zealand to exist for its people, or is it to be possessed and controlled by a set of men because they have the command of money? This question has been argued over and over again. We do not go to the Chamber of the Legislative Assembly for an answer to it, but to the people. They are our Caisar, and they have decreed with one voice that New Zealand shall bo, as far as it can be made so, the happy home of men, women, and children. There is, therefore, 110 need that the Government should be in doubt and that Mr M'Kenzie should meet the colonists face to face to receive his instructions what to do in this emergency. The Government's simple duty is to give effect to the sentiment, and that cannot be accomplished without the Land Bill, whatever may be its faults. They have been delegated to do this ; and if the result of such a bestowment of confidence is to be reactionary and retaliatory legislation that out-conservatives Conservatism then it would have been better had the Government never emerged from the stage of Opposition into full political life. We remind the Council, however, that there is a limit to a people's endurance, and that even the puissant British House of Lords has had to be silenced before now by the infusion of a conflicting element. To at once emulate this example is the undoubted duty of the Government. No considerations of inconvenience ought to be permitted to sway them. The will and the good of the country are paramount, and though it should be necessary to delay the session for two or three weeks, or even to call Parliament together again, the Government should do whatever may be necessary to force their Bill through. If the Council's Bill were to become law the monopolist would hold high carnival, whilst the solemn procession of the people from our shores would march steadily on.