SIR GEORGE GREY on LAND SHARKS and GRIDIRONING.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 522, 20 May 1880, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY on LAND SHARKS and GRIDIRONING.

Addressing a public meeting at Auckland last week, Sir George Grey said; —“ A small number of persons had got the best porlionsof thccolony in their hands wrongfully anti irreparably as lie believed. Take Canterbury, for instance, with which some of the present Ministers were connected, where unsold lands had been declared open to all, and where a man might select and go to Clnistchurch and pay his £2 an acre and get his selection. A system of gridironing had obtained, whiclicfl'ectually closed the country against small selectors, and which he explained at length. An effort ought to be made by law to remedy that wrong, and the injuries that had been perpetrated on individuals. There were instances in oilier provinces of men holding 100,000 acres of land; one case was in Otago, where a number of capitalists bought a largo tract of land, formed a company, and now informed the public in offering it for sale, (hat they had selected bso as to prevent adjoining land being bought by anybody, and which block was being used as a run, to be purchased when necessary. Such a land system led to the ownership of a class of men, and to servility and pauperism such as that afflicting Ireland. lie had in his youth seen peasants flogged for standing on a field wall and turning the fox. Modern writers had laid it down as a noteworthy fact that in a new country the most idle and most cunning would acquire lands of the State unless watched. It was done by intrigue and without labor, while the tradesman was absorbed in his business, and the artizan in his toil. If they did not see to equal rights for all in purchasing public estate, I hey would be serfs to those who held the land. Look at the Legislative Council, nominated by the Crown, and representing landed interests, and (hose only. Though the people had no voice in their election, yet no law could be made or altered without their consent. While he was in England ho heard of laws being altered in Council and sent down to the Lower House in a form which had proved injurious to the interests of the colony as a whole. A Legislative Councillor could resign his seat, get elected for a small constituency, and take his scat in the Asssembly, and even if they rejected the man as a representative the Governor could call that man to the Upper House, and put him in the Ministry, in spite of the people. They had no chance of getting good laws while such a state of things existed. What right hail any class of men to get vast tracts of land by methods which the public could not use, or to work land laws so as to obtain their own aggrandisement ? Would the people of Auckland stand the system of gridironing here? Then, again, a system of confidential letters had sprung in the Govercment. There was no such thing in England, Could any of his audience write to the Minister of Lands treating for 80,000 acres on tcims not known to the public ? Such practice as confidential letter writing would have to be stopped, as Sir Bobert Peel had stopped it in England. Largo blocks of land were now being purchased by private parties, over which the public had valid rights. In one case they were going to allow some English gentlemen to to acquire 250,000 to 300,000 acres conditionally on advances being refunded to the extent of 4*5000.