LAND SETTLEMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2104, 21 June 1894, Page 3

LAND SETTLEMENT.

It will be remembered that recently, in an article dealing with the question of land settlement, we set forth a comparative table showing the actual settlement for the past five years. The figures must have been a little startling to a good many people, inasmuch as they showed clearly enough that the claims made by and on behalf of the Government that they had greatly accelerated the progress of settlement were purely pretence and delusion. Needless to say the pretence was on the part of the Government and ' the delusion on the part of the good people who believed in their statements. In order to get a reliable survey of the actual settlement we omitted the small grazing runs and the special settlement associations. The small grazing runs were omitted because, as everybody knows, they do not represent settlement in the ordinary sense of the term, but grazing over considerable areas of inferior land in its native state. The associations were properly omitted, because the men composing them were admittedly not on the land, while numbers of them have since deliberately abandoned the right they had acquired under the system to go upon it. To include such " settlement^ is deliberately to mislead the public/and to enable any Minister who is not troubled with scruples to show a better paper record than his predecessors, when actual settlement may have diminished under him the while. The Lyttelton Times challenges our position, but in so very half-hearted a manner as to show that it also has suffered a shock in the dissipation of the settlement delusion. It begins by calling our article a '^remarkable declaration," and ends by leaving it still quite as remarkable — for the exposure it makes. Our contemporary dwells especially on the omission of the small grazing runs. By all means, therefore, let them be included, and indeed have the same form of table all to themselves. It will be as follows : —

Our contemporary will therefore see that had we included the runs in question they would have strengthened rather than weakened our original figures. The number of small runs was greater and the area per man smaller in 1889 than in 1893. But no argument from the fact is to be drawn in favour of the late Government, since it is very questionable whether the small run policy has not largely reduced to the colony the value of mountain areas and at the same time much reduced the employment of labour in the country districts. But the Lyttelton Times must be very hard pressed indeed for argument when it abandons the settlement returns and falls back on the agricultural statistics. The cultivated holdings it declares have increased during the past year by 2468 — whence our contemporary argues that it is " reasonable to assume " that a large portion of them was occupied under the liberal terms offered by the Government. What on earth is the use of making assumptions, reasonable or unreasonable, when the actual settlement "under the liberal terms offered by the Government "is set down for us in black and white by the department? Does our contemporary wish the colony to believe that the cultivated holdings never increased in the past by more than 2400 in any one year?

We have no desire to disparage the efforts of the Hon. Mr M'Kenzib ; but, to use his own favourite and solitary proverb, "Facts are chiels that winna ding." But we suspect that misstatements will ultimately "ding" when the moral sense of the community is awakened to the nature and "extent of the deception that has been practised. The statement made by Mr M'Kenzie (to help a candidate at an election) that in 1892 he " had put 1740 settlers on the land " under the association system, when the returns showed the real number as 13, has already gone through the " dinging " process. And the statement made at Timaru the other day that he had "put 1000 settlers a year more on the

The Otago Central.

tives met the Executive Committee of the Otago Central Railway League has bad one effect iE no other: it has

brought into greater prominence the remarkable ignorance of the subject displayed by Borne of our members. Three points on which this lack of knowledge was displayed are especially noticeable in the report of what was said by some of the city and suburban representatives. One of these is a comparatively small matter, and we only notice it because it tends to indicate some of the difficulties the friends of the railway have to contend with— we refer to the charge brought by Mr Pinkebton against the league of having led the Government to believe that culverts only were necessary where bridges were really required. Mr Pinkbrton has surely had experience enough to warrant as in charitably assuming that he knew he was talking nonsense. As the .chairman of the meeting pointed out, the Government are instructed by the officer of the department in all such matters, and could not possibly have been misled by any such statement, even bad it been made to them, which, of course, is very improbable. • We suspect that there was a sort of idea in Mr Pinkerton's mind that some excuse was necessary for culpable delay of the bridge work for more than a year on the part of the Government, and their gross breach of faith with regard to the tunnel. That the excuse he hit upon was untenable he probably sees now. Another of our worthy representatives spoke with confident authority in condemnation of the line. "He had been over the country and had used his eyes," he said, and then it transpired that he had never been farther than Hydel What would be the value of the opinion of a man who claimed to judge personally of the fertility of the Taieri plain on the strength of a trip to Caversham? What hope can we entertain of fair play for the work at the hands of Parliament when the advocacy of its interests is entrusted to representatives of that kind 1 That the question of ways and means assumed greater prominence at this conference than it has done at any former meetings is a sign of the times. There is, unfortunately, a growing feeling throughout -the community in favour oE another loan. We have already discussed this question, and, while pointing out the dangers, have endeavoured to indicate the necessary safeguards. So far as the Otago Central railway is concerned, a plan has many times been suggested for its rapid construotion which ought to have met with more consideration than it has ever yet received — we refer, as we have frequently done before, to that embodied in the Bill introduced in 1889, to which reference wag made at the meeting by the chairman. From what was said by members who discussed this aspect of the question, it is evident that that Bill has nob only not received the attention it deserves, but that our present city and suburban members are quite ignorant of its merits. And yet we venture to say that the more carefully it is considered the more generally it ought to be approved. The proportion o€ the land rents required- to keep up the neceßsary interest payments is small, and the annual charge on the revenue for the line would not be anything like what ib has been and necessarily otherwiee must be. It has been asserted that representatives of other paits of the colony would not agree tp setting aside part of the land revenue in this way, but we venture to believe that were it fairly and zealously submitted to Parliament its inherent merits would in time be recognised. The North Island provincial districts have always large votes for roads on the Estimates every year, involving amounts far in excess of any that have ever been devoted to the construction of the Otago Central railway, but no material assistance of tbat kind is ever claimed for cr given to Otag-o. Looking at the railway merely as a road to open up Crown lands its claims as a profitable reproductive work stand higher than any other that could be brought before Parliament, a&d muse be conceded by all sensible men, if only because its construction would lead to a larger settlement of revenue-producing people than any other road in the colony. We commend an exhaustive study of the subject to Mr Babnshaw, who has evidently not yet given it the atcention which in deserves, and of whose ability co do it justice there can be little doubt. As an avowed opponent of a return to the objectionable loan policy of the past, is ought to present itself to him as the only way out of the difficulty. One thing is certain, and that is, that unless all available means are taken to enforce the claims of the railway to mor-^ consideration than it has yet received, and to bafeten it on to its completion, Dacedir, and the back country on wb/ch it depenen for the development of its trade, trust bo prejudicially affected, and those who rut: supposed to Le. the peculiar care o! the Labour member?, and by whose votes tbey have bscn elected, will have to suffer mo»e from want of employment and from low wages than they have ever yet done, bad a-i things ate with then.-, now.

land than his predecessors" is altogether too audacious to require " dinging." For, of course, if all the association paper settlement were included and no retirements, forfeitures, or abandonments had taken place, even then the increase would not have amounted to half what he declauad it had. If Mr M'Kenzib would only allow his work to speak for itself, and stick closely to the actual facts, he would probably in the main come out creditably enough as a land administrator. But the facts as they stand show that a yery great injustice has been done to the Hon. G-. F. RicnAEDSON, who with all his faults was every whit as successful as Mr M'Kenzie in the work of settlement; the only difference being that he did his work in a quiet and unostentatious manner, while his successor makes a prodigious noise over what he does.

The recent conference at which looal members of the House of KeDresenta-

Year. No. of Small Runholders. Total Area. Average Run Per Man. Government in Office. .889 .890 .891 .892 .893 81 35 43 80 39 161,652 60,340 86,161 159,464 92,926 1995 1724 i 2004 1993 2382 < Atkinson Atkinson Atkinson Ballance Seddon