THE AUCKLAND LAND POLICY.

Otago Witness, Issue 421, 24 December 1859, Page 7

THE AUCKLAND LAND POLICY.

(From the Melbourne Argus, Nov. 2.)

The province of Auckland, New Zealand, has the good or evil fortune to have had the administration of its public affairs confided to what is generally known as " the uneducated Government," composed, we believe, of men whom Mr. O'Shanassy would have delighted to honour, if they had been residents in this colony, by placing them in the Commission of the Peace. An uneducated Government is, almost of necessity, " a people's government," aud a people's government may be expected to deal with the question of the public lands after a popular fashion f accordingly we find the ruling powers in that Province adopting a very simple expedient for settling the population on the soil, and one which ought to command itself to the warmest^ approbation of the Convention. Agents in England were commissioned to offer a free grant of forty acies to every male immigrant under certain conditions,

and this enticing promise has brought out several hundred able-bodied men, ready to assist in the inauguration of a social millenium : a small farm for nothing in the " Great Britain of the South," certainly appears to be a splendid temptation, and it is somewhat surprising that the lure did not cause an extensive defection of amateur agriculturists and " landless resolutes" from the ranks of our Eastern Market agitators. But what is far more astonishing than this indifference, is the fact that although numbers of forty-acre immigrants have landed at Auckland, the dawn of the millenium U indefinitely postponed. Worse than this, some of these landed proprietors are actually writing letters to the local papers complaining of " the extreme suffering and immediately pressing want" which they are undergoing, and stalnsj that " what is most wanted 'v some well-con-ceived and arranged, and wisdy-cairied-out plan, which shall bring the labour to the land, and the land to tho labour." The editor of the " Southern Cross" sh tkes his head in token of sorrowful assent, and despondingly inquires, how is it to bo done ? The only answer to the question which we can suggest is this, — that inasmuch as the Provincial Government has given away the land, it ought to supplement its bounty by undertaking to clear, fence, and cultivate these forty-acre allotments, to indemnify the owners for any losses they may sustain by blight, drought, or an untoward season ; to carry the produce to market, sell it, and lodge the proceeds to the credit of the forty-acre allottees in any bank they might appoint. We are not certain that a paternal Government ought to stop here. Why should it not erect a cottage or nee upon each allotment, and furnish the drawingroom with one of firard's grand pianos, and coach-house with a well-appointed buggy and pair ?

The "Southern Cross," taking into consideration the inconvenient circumstances that a farm cannot be tilled without capital — that wheat, oats, and potatoes do not spring up in a single night, like mushrooms — that " the greater portion of the available land is not fitted for plough farming "—" — and that ordinary employment is unattainable, recommends the forty-acre men to turn their attention to the scraping of flax and to the digging of the kauri gum ; failing which, it proposes that these unfortunate landed proprietors should remove to the Bay of Islands district, where, it seems, there is " a good land revenue to vely upon, owing to the Government land having been so long kept out of the market," In other words, it is believed that the prospects of the immigrants will be more hopeful where the Crown Lands are disposed of by sale, than where they are given away in fortyacre farms ! "In the first place," says the journal quoted above, " there is a pressing demand for labour in that portion of the province ; " and, in the second place, as the district of the Bay of Islands is about to be erected into a separate province, it will be " relieved from the selfishness and neglect of an Auckland Provincial Government." "Selfishness and neglect!" And this is said of a Government which outeonventions the Victorian Convention, and scrambles forty - acre farms among all comers. Is there no gratitude left in the world ?

Reflecting in a more serious mood, however, upon the " extreme suffering " and "pressing want" experienced by these unsettled settlers, the question arises, whether the adoption by our own Legislature of a land system of boundless liberality, such as even a Don would devise, and a Wilson Gray might approve, would exempt the freest of free selectors from the destitution in which the estated immigrants at Auckland find themselves, albeit with no " deferred payments " to vex their minds and lessen their means in the future ? Must we arrive at the painful conclusion that the fee-simple of a forty-acre farm does not insure a competency to its possessor, and that there are — among our population — extravagances of expectation to be discouraged, as well as imperfect systems of administration to be amended 1 Is it possible that there is no short cut to national prosperity, any more than there is a royal road to learning ; and must we accept as an undeniable truth in social philosophy, the humiliating fact, that, whether as regards individuals or communities, a sound end durable prosperity is a thing of slow growth, demanding the exercise of patience, thrift, diligence, selfcontrol, and self-denial, — that, property represents the accumulated results of the exertion of these qualities, and that the men who are most likely to achieve success in life, to elevate their own status, and to see their children climbing to still greater heights upon the ladder of society, are not those who bawl the loudest and talk the most extreme balderdash on the platform and the stump, but such as, thinking more of the performance of their duty to the State as citizens than of its duty to them as subjects, fulfil the former faithfully, and criticise the latter fairly and not factiously ?