The Pahiatua Star. (Published Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.) WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1891. LAND NATIONALISATION.—WHY WE SHOULD SHUN IT.

Pahiatua Star and Eketahuna Advertiser, Volume 6, Issue 564, 25 November 1891, Page 2

The Pahiatua Star. (Published Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.) WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1891. LAND NATIONALISATION.—WHY WE SHOULD SHUN IT.

Tiieiie are few men in Now Zealand better capable of giving an opinion on the evils of a system of land nationalisation —once so aptly described as the most charming theory ever formulated, and tho most fallacious—than the Hon Dr Pollen. At the time when many of the the wonderful young politicians of the present day were in their swaddling clothes he was, without doubt, one of the cleverest men in the colony, and at that time clever men were the rule, and not as is now the case, the rare exception, in politics in New Zealand. The Dr, in his speech in the Council, said : Sir, it is not improbable that the action of the Legislative Council with respect to the Land Bill may be made a stalking-horse from which agitators may hurl invectives during the recess against the Council. Sir, the real question that underlies all this discussion upon the subject of land is not the nationalisation of the land, which is a craze, but the eminently practical question. What is the most fitting type of settler for the lands of New Zealand ? Is it the yeoman freeholder or the Italian ryot ? Are we to be vassals of the Crown and slaves of the Ministry of the day, or are we to to be self-reliant men, cultivating our own lands, and helping, each one of us, to further the interests of the colony ? Only those who know anything about tho administration of land can form even the most remote conception of what the nationalisation of the land, from the official point of view, really means. Imagine for a moment a nation of tenants besieging the House of ltepresentaiives every year, for the reduction of rents, for this, that, and the other. See what happens in our own small microcosm with the Selectors' Lands Devaluation Act. Multiply this a million times, and you will have some idea of the scene during sessions under the nationalisation of the land ? It is simply a craze, and nothing more or less ; it has no meaning. No one has yet been a’jle, or has taken the trouble, to trace it from its inception down to the practical point to which I have just referred. Sir, I will not say this Council can afford to disregard public opinion, but it may safely rest on its own consciousness in all these matters of not merely having opposed a Ministry, not merely opposed a policy, but of having done in every case that which it conscientiously believed to be for the time just and proper, and that which would tend most to the advancement of the interests ot the colony. In two or three weeks’ time the Fublic Works Department will be ready to let small contracts for the construction of the Eketahuna-Woodville railway.