LAND PURCHASES.

Thames Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 1881, 3 August 1874, Page 3

LAND PURCHASES.

The following letter from Mr Alfred Cox has been published in an Auckland contemporary. It shows that the story about the sale of 150,000 acre< of land to him, mentioned by Mr Waterhouse, is entirely false: — Sir, -Would it be thought impertinent in me to ask, through your columns, who is responsible for the accuracy (I had well nigh written inaccuracy) of the telegrams, _ Parliamentary and other, that appear in the daily newspapers so conspicuously? I have a small grievance—the public a big one ;—will you sufFer me to ventilate it ? In the Legislative Council, on Thursday, the 9th insfc,, Mr Waterhouse, in moving, " That in the opinion of this Council the mode of selling and disposing of land under the New Zealand Settlements Act be regulated by an Act of the General Assembly, and not, as at present, by the regulations made at the will of the Government of the day," remarked, " that too much discretionary power was left in the hands of the Government, as instanced in the case of 150,000 acres of land in the Waikato district being sold to Mr Cox," &c, &c. ,The only land in Waikato purchased by •me from the General Government is a :block of 200 acres, bought in the ordinary way, by public auction, at the upset price of ten shillings an acre. This land was advertised for sale in the daily newspapers three months before the day of sale. In the same telegram referenco is made to the sale to a company of 70,000 acres of land at the Piako. I never had an interest, direct or indirect, in such purchase. Again, last week, in the House of Eepresentatives, Mr Luckie gave notice of motion for papers relating to the sale by the Government to Mr Cox of" large blocks of land in the Hawke's Bay province," but I observe by the telegrams reporting proceedings on Tuesday last that that part of this motion had been allowed to lapse, without comment or explanation. In the face of this the public will have some difficulty in believing that I have never purchased for myself, or on behalf of another, an acre of land in Hawke's Bay, from either the General or Provincial Governments. I am a leaseholder of 25,000 acres of confiscated laud in Hawke's Bay. Upon applying to the Gonoral Government for an extension of lease over this, I was asked whether it would not suit me to purchase the block P My answer was that it might suit mo to buy a portion of it—about 8,000 acres. An application _ to buy so much was lodged by me with the Government, but jwhether I shall succeed in getting this land at 3s 6d or 5s an acre, or at all, is at present uncertain. In days gone by, [ when Mr O'Connell was once reminded that his opinion upon some public quesj fcioa differed from tlioaa expressed by the

newspapers, he told his audience that he went to the newspapers for his facts, but that bis opinions were his own. Are we in the present day so far advanced, or thus far retrograded, that we must not believe in the facts, Parliamentary and telegraphic, that stand out so prominently in the daily newspapers ? What say you ?