AGRICULTURAL MATTERS AT HYDE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1461, 15 November 1879, Page 5

AGRICULTURAL MATTERS AT HYDE.

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But a few years have vanished into the vast ocean of time since the district around this town was but a wilderness, with here and there an oasis to the extent of a quarter-acre of kitchen garden dotted over its surface ; and yet within such a short space of time can we count noarly 30 settlers or farmers, with their complements of land, who have made their homes under the deferred-payment and -agricultural lease system, and who have evidently determined to settle themselves down to that most honourable of all callings — tillers of the soil. It is with no slight satisfaction that we look around and sac with thys quick march of events the rapid development of agricultural prosperity, where, but half a dozen years gone, grew nothing but scrub and spear grass. Times, since the takingupof these blocks, have changed, and the powers of the present Land Act have succeeded in their evident design of obviating the settlement of the Colony by doubling the already high price of land. Other flaws and imperfections have since been discovered, which should cause the merest tyro in legal matters to blush with conscious shame at such an apparently careless manipulation of perhaps the most important dooument to the future welfare of the Colony. If we look at the general stagnation of agricultural affairs in the Old Country at the present time, we need not be at all astonished if before half a century has sped this presently prosperous Colony should be in the throes of a similar convulsion. When we look at the barriers and obstacles constantly in course of construction to bar the path of settlement, we must indeed be sanguine to imagine that the country can stand such maladministration as has been given to us in the name of Liberal reforms. The cry and watchword of the people should be "The land for the people," and they should not be content until that cry is satisfactorily attended to ; for does not the ceuntry belong to the people who inhabit it ? In these days, the claims of the pooir to a share of the land, and to independence as a prospective reward for their industry, are not very likely to be remembered ; but if it be true that the system of large tenancies, and still more of monopolised proprietorship, has not been able to prevent a decrease of our rural population, it becomes high time for the community to demand that the lands be utilised and the people provided with the means of earning an honourable livelihood in that healthy and evercoveted employment — the culture of the soil.