The Ballance Special Settlements

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6478, 22 September 1892, Page 4

The Ballance Special Settlements

About sixteen years ago (says the VVel lington Press) the gentleman who is now Premier of New Zealand was Minister of Lands in thu Stout-Vogel Government He had then, as now, a special settlement fad, by meana of which he was going to make Naw Zealand a kind of terrestrial paradiso. If only his scheme were carried out, then the colony would have no more ijoverty, no more worry about unemployed, no more taxes or rates for charitable aid. He only asked for a very little sum-about L5,000-to put his theory into practice, just on a very small and purely experimental scale. The House, in a w«ak moment, yielded to his prayerful ensreaties, and authorised him to expend LSOOO. The honorable gentleman, having once got astride of hia hobby, soon rode it to death. He committed the colony to liabilities for spacial settlements totalling about L 70,000, or Jowtccti time* tho sum authorised by Parliament ! The StoutBallance Ministry was ejected from office for their shameless prodigality in dealing with finance, but their successors, the Atkinson-Mitchelson Government, had to carry owt all the obligations incurred by them, and in this respect the unauthorised expenditure incurred by the Hob. Mr ballance on his special settlement fad was, of course, no exception. Like most of the expenditure undertaken by the present Premier in the prosecution of his visionary ideas for the regeneration of the human race, the special settlement L 70.000 was simply wasted, and might just as well have been flung into the sea. The settlements were situated in localities remote from markets, and having no roads of oven the most primitive kind. Once the artificial sustenance supplied by State-aid was cut off, they died from sheer inanation. lor a little time, the Ballance special settlements located in the Woodvillo-Pahiatua district— the most favorably situated of the whole batch— seemed to flourish, and the newspapeiH, inspired by their founder, notably, Mr Bounce's own paper, the Wanganui Herald— published periodically columns of tfush about them. But that kind of forcing cannot bo kept up, and even the Woodville-Pahiatuaspecial settlements have, according to recent reliable testimony, almost perished off the face of the earth. ThePahiatuaStargtates that out j of 192 original members of the Ballance Settlement Associations in the district where it is published, there now remain only nine. What has become of the other 183? They have simply been starved out, or have sold their sections to land speculators, and the colony has lost not only the L 70.000 spent in assisting them, but has aotually aided in tho promotion of that thing which tho Hon. Me Balhiuce and the Hon. John McKenzie pretend to abhor— land speculation. The Hon. Mr Balance is again in office ; he has again at his command the taxpayers' [money ; and finally, the House has given him an unlimited order for the carrying out of his special settlement scheme. Tho special settlement tenure is to be the tenure, and no person will have a chance of securing a piece of good land undor any other system. We wonder what the results w ill be six years hence. Will not the history of 1886 b» repoated ? Will not nine out of every ten of tho original selectors have disposed of their holdings to landgrabbers, and departed for fresh fields with the profits out of their land speculation in their pockets .