THE LAND COMMISSION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2664, 5 April 1905, Page 6

THE LAND COMMISSION.

One of the most curious circumstances in connection with the sittings of the Land Commission has been, as any one of the members will probably admit, the difficulty it has encountered in securing evidence. The experience they had in Dunedin on Monday, when the Commissioners found the supply of witnesses temporarily exhausted, was only a repetition of previous experiences they have had, even in the country districts. And it points to the conclusion, we believe, that the public is of opinion that the Commission is unnecessary and that its appointment was inspired not so much by a desire to collect information respecting the administration of the land laws as by a determination to secure a political object and to stave off the time when a declaration of land policy on the part of the Government will have to be made. Be thaj; as it may, we feel assured that the taxpayer will seriously question whether the evidence taken before the Commission and the report of the Commission will, as a State document, be worth one-half of the money that is being and will be expended upon its production. A great deal of the evidence that is being laboriously recorded might equally well have been secured by the Commissioners from members of their own body who, as practical farmers, know perfectly well, without travelling through the country in order to obtain the information, what the views of their class are upon the questions that are comprised within the order of reference. Even the purely doctrinaire view that was placed before the Commissioners on Monday morning might, if desired, have been elicited from one of their own number. If evidence of the kind which has formed the staple of that so far presented is to be collected throughout the whole of the colony, it is very much to be doubted whether the effect of the labours of the Commission will be materially to increase the sum total of the knowledge already possessed by the Government, by Parliament, and by the public respecting the conditions of land settlement, the admimstra<tion of the land laws, and the merits of different sj-stems of land tenure. And it must already be abundantly clear that it is utterly futile to suppose that the final report of the Commission will be in the hands of the Governor by such a time as will afford Parliament an opportunity of I effectively discussing it in the ensuing session. The Commission has now been engaged on its task for more than a month, and we cannot assume bhat it will have completed its investigations in Canterbury, Westland, Nelson, and Marjborough within a shorter period of time than it is devoting to Ofcago and Sout-h-

land. Even if it should succeed in having its report and recommendations, so far as the South Island is affected, prepared for presentation to Parliament at the opening of the session, it will still have the whole o£ its investigations in the North Island to undertake, and it is hardly conceivable that these will occupy less time than the inquiries in the South Island will absorb. Consequently it seems quite possible that the Commission will be still sitting when the parliamentary session is drawing to a close, and in that event it is certain that the mass of evidence it is plainly intent upon accumulating will not be available as a State document during the general election campaign. Fortunately the newspaper reports of the proceedings of the Commission will supply the ordinary elector with as much information as he will probably care to possess regarding the nature of the opinions which are "being secured from witnesses. And it is hardly likely that the report of the Commission will greatly influence the average settler or the average artisan in the formation of his individual judgment regarding; tli© matters that &xq dis-

cussed in the evidence. So far as the land tenure question is concerned,, the farming community lias already made up its mind. The Commission must, have been impressed with the pmctical unanimity with which settlers have expressed themselves in favour of the freehold system as ;i {fording the greatest incentive to j the farmer to improve his property. j Tlio'-e who are oj:>poscd to the freehold readily admit that from the point of view of the fanner himself it is the most desirable of all systems of tenures. But they declare that the interests of the State, which are superior to tho&e of the individual, demand that the Crown shall not part with any more of its land upon terms that will involve its alienation. That is submitted as an article of public policy. And because it is regarded as inimical to public policy and because, also, it is claim-ad that a breach of faith with the State would be involved, the section of the public that subscribes to this doctrine opposes the extension to the ordinary Crown tenants of the right to obtain the freehold of their land. The argument, however, that a breach of faith would be involved clearly falls to the ground. If the Crown tenant is to be allowed to purchase the land he is leasing, he will do so by virtue of an arrangement to which both the State and himself will be parties. The original contract will be varied by mutual consent, and in those circumstances there can be no breach of faith. The objection that public policy is opposed to the concession to Crown tenants of the privilege for which they ask rests chiefly upon the ground that the State will, it is alleged, be deprived of the unearned increment. The representative of the Trades and Labour Council, who appeared before the Commission "to voice the views, he implied, of 5000 trade unionists, declared that " a bare, bald steal from the State " would be involved in the "confiscation " to the tenant " of the unearned increment of the land." This witness was, however, constrained to acknowledge that a great deal of the increment of the land" was very hard earned, and his sense of fairness forced him to admit that so far as the value of the land was due to the work of the tenant it should be absolutely secured to him. How the question of the proportion of the increment that is unearned and the proportion that is hard-earned is to be determined he did not suggest, while he does not seem to have been asked whether the power of the State to tax the land is not sufficient to secure to it at all times its share of the increment. Though the considerations which he addressed to the Commission represent probably the full strength of the case that can be presented in opposition to the claim of the tenantry we are unable to recognise that they were at all adequate. Nor will the assurance he offered that the Labour party has no thought of applying its revaluation proposals retrospectively prove very satisfactory to farmers. For is it conceivable that a person taking up land in future on terms providing for periodical revaluations would be content to see his neighbour, who had secured land before him, occupying it on terms that contained no such provision ? The plain answer is that two leasing tenures such as the land " reformers " desire to seer established could never exist side by side: the holders of leases providing for revaluation would have a perpetual grievance. And really the sound solution of the land -problem is to permit the Crown tenants to acquire the freeholds of their land, not necessarily at the values that were originally fixed, but certainly upon fair and equitable terms.