The Freehold Laws.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13803, 14 January 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Freehold Laws.

L'N 1)E H P1? 0 VINCI A LISM

The early squatters in South Canterbury did not spend much money on purcha.sing freeholds, until some years after they had become settled, but provision had been made, for purchases. The Canterbury Association made "Land Regulations" to control the sale of freeholds as well as the leasing of unsold land, and as the settlors found it necessary to modify the regulations regarding 'pastoral leases, so also they modified the freehold law, a few years later, by means of a Provincial Ordinance. This brings us to the stage, of formal legislation. Iu 1852 the Imperial Parliament passed the. New Ze-dand Act, which had been drafted or sketched out by Sir George Grey. This Act made New Zealand independent of New South Wales, to which she had been attached for purposes of government. It provided for a General Assembly, much" as we have it now; divided New Zealand into six "Provinces," of which Canterbury from the Waitaki to the Hurunui and from sea, to sea formed one; and for each province provided an olective Provincial Council with a Superintendent elected, like the Prosideut, of the United States, by the vote of all the electors of the province.* The electors were resident owners of land. The Provincial"Councils were given control of lands and public, works, education and police, and various other matters, while the General Assembly had charge of the Customs, post and telegraphs, and other matters affecting the colony as a whole, including the most important question of that dav, .the Maori ■War.-

[ Sir 'George Grey was a cheap land man, a strong opponent of the Wakefield theory, and though the Act gave !.the control of lands wholly to the Provincial Councils, Sir George endeavoured to impress his view on the land question upon the whole colony, before bringing the Constitution Act into force.. This latter . was done by a Proclamation dated March sth, 1853, and by another Proclamation, dated the day before, Sir George Grey, forestalled the action of the future Provincial Councils, by reducing the selling price to 5s and 10s an acre. Though this order could not,.be- applied to the Canterbury block, the Canterbury settlers, the majority of whom were Wakefieldites, saw that it must be detrimental to their future to have two prices for land in the province; a ruit was laid in the Supremo Court and a decision obtained that the proclamation of the 4th March was ultra vires. Notwithstanding this,., or before the judgment could be given effect to, some parcels of land had ; been bought in South • Canterbury at the reduced rate. A large block of Seadown, and the site of Rhodes Town, Timaru, are said to have been bought at 10s an acre by Rhodes Bros. In North Canterbury the Glonmark estate was bought at this price. Tiio people of other provincial districts, except Otago, appear to have allowed Sir George Grey's Proclamation to b<applied for some years, and the consequences proved that Sir George Grey, in his anxiety to secure cheap land for the people, took quite the wrong course, for the good lands of Nelson, Marlborough, Hawke's Bay and Wellington, were quickly snapped up in large blocks. The greater part of Hawke's Bay was bought lip at 5s an acre, before 1860. When the Canterbury Provincial Council had been elected and had got into full swing, one of the first questions it had to settle was the price of rural land, and-eventually it was fixed at £2 an ixcvc, with "free selection before survey"—that -is, one could select a section anywhere in any direction if there had been no road or section laid out near it the sections must not be less than 20 acres, nor less than 40 chains long. This decision took some time to arrive at, for the old controversy between the dearland and the cheap-land theorists had to bo fought out afresh; and the question of free selection before survey was a still more important one for' the squatters. The. squatters were now comfortably settling down on their leased runs, and they did not want to be liable to he disturbed by outsiders buying freeholds within their runs, just when and where they pleased. Thev wished the law to provide that lands must bo selected as suitable for settlement and surveyed into farm lots before being sold or offered for sale. But they wished'the lessees to have power to' purchase land anywhere within their runs, without waiting for survey or official selection. The following extract from a parody on Longfellow's "Hiawatha," by Crostoio Ward, satirically describes part of the debate oh'the'"free selection before survey" question:—

When he stopped, rose Jonniol-tok, Shrewd and subtle Jonniol-tok!

lie the double-barrelled justice Ever brought to give opinions; And at once he shoved his oar in in his customary manner: — " I assent to these proposals With a trifling reservation, Yc will sweep awuy conditions Which tie up the. land so closely, Onlv ye'll except the squatterWill not touch the rights of squatters, Of the shepherds and the stockmen. Ye shall take the rights of farmers, Of the millers, bakers, butchers, Tailors, drapers, clothiers, hatters, Soldiers, doctors, undertakers, Of storekeepers and bootmakers, Of all trades and occupations, Of all persons in. the province, But the shepherds, the runholders; Them ye shall not touch rior injure." Thus he spake and gave no reason, Shrewd and subtle Jonniol-tok 1 Then spoke rugged Bobirodi, The hard-headed one from Yorkshire; He the prince of all tho squatters, Largest holder of runholders — "Yo remember old Suellis, Councillor with us of old time: Crafty statesman, cunning prophet, Who ta\ight all of. us our wisdom, He arranged the matter for us, And he said it should not alter, Should remain as ho had left it, * As ho prophesied, so bo it." And the very big man, Stunuem, Moving only eyes and shoulders, Mutely making demonstrations; Saying naught was most impressive; Then the shepherds in a chorus, Squatters and the friends of squat- . tors, , Begged, implored, and prayed tho Council _• To consider all their hardships; How their rents were so oppressive, How their wool was sold for nothing, How they could not sell their wethers For the paltry price of mutton, How the market rate of stations Showed it was a losing business, And they begged and prayed tho Council r,, 'i .maintain the old conditions That had tied tho hand so closely, Only on behalf of squatters Sweeping quite away the others, , * . * * * » * * Few wore bold enough to argue In reply to Bibirodi To the very big man Stunncm To tho subtle Jonniol-tok And the few that stood thoir ground ' there— ' Stood their ground, and. asked fot; justice,

Simple justice to all classes — They were bullied and brow-beaten, Called to order, reprimanded By the big men, the stock-owners, Squatters, and the friends of squatters, So [lie fluent Secretary.

Oloware, the' rapid speaker, With his colleague sitting by him* Toniieas, the Chief Surveyor,

Trembled on the crimson cushions, Gave them all that they demanded, Granted all the boon they asked for, Never dared to make objections, For they feared the mighty squatters. » » * * * *

And they kicked the farmer hackward From the fertile spots of country In the region of the Westward, — Never thinking of hereafter. [The persons named in the Hiawathan tongue are John Hall, R. Rhodes, Sewell,' Studholnie', Ollivier, and T. Cass.] The free selection principle was carried, however, and the squatter memhars of the Council found other ways of hampering the would-be freeholder in his search for suitable land. Mr H. J. Sealey, an ex-surveyor, writing in 1880 of his own knowledge of- what had been : done,'said: —The runholders had advantages over outsiders, in their knowledge of the land, which enabled them to "spot" it in such a way as to be useless to an outsider, and in • their system of Improvement Preemptive* Rights, which secured to the ruhholder large areas for which they paid nothing at all. A pre-emptive right, or first right of purchase, was given over 50 acres for each half mile of wire fence, erected, in a strip all along the fence, "so that by running sub-division fences up all the watered vallevß and across all open flats, nearly the whole, run could be secured from purchase." In two cases in. South. Canterbury "fences were run all along the main roads and pre-emp-tive rights taken out for them in such a way as to secure all the frontage." "Gridironing" has been much talked of, but it was not extensively resorted to; "it required too much cash outlay in proportion to results. 'Spotting' did much more harm. This consisted in buying numerous small sections varying from 20 acres to 100 :-acres or upwards, scattered in such a way as to spoil as much as possible of the* country: for purchase by a farmer or any outsider; frequently these were taken in such a way as to cover all the small creeks in the valleys, leaving .the adjacent downs and ridges secure from purchase owing to the lack of water. [This "spotting" device was also used to secure the gully bushes, by the purchase of a section across the foot of the gully so that there was im roid access. .possible to the gully behind, and some of these contained hundreds of acres of small timber. Valuable timber lands were bought ontright-1 Shepherds and other employees had orders to watch strangers seen on the run; and report them at head quarters; and so many a wouldbe farmer, after wasting days in picking: out a suitable selection has found on going to the Land Office that he was too late, and that the piece of land he had chosen had just been secured for the runholder. Altogether a man wanting land had to be as much on the alert as he would in Scotland to stalk a stag. . . . With regard to young men coming out from England with small capitals, intending " to "become farmers, they were generally well received and hospitably treated, until they spoke of buying land, when they were quickly made to understand that they would* lose cast* if they did so; for a-public opinion had grown up, led by the runholders and their •friends, that it was a mean action to buy land on a run; and as the whole country was parcelled out in runs, it followed that a man could not buy land anywhere without offending the prejudices of the runholding class." (Thus Thomas King, a wealthy Australian, took a situation as a shepherd on the Levels or Otipua- stations —so the story goes, and 'twill serve till he had spied out the land, and then he walked into the Land Office at Christchurch in his blue jumper and soiled moleskins, and put down his marked cheque for £20,000.) "Nevertheless' there was some land being purchased, for a branch of the Christchurch Land Office was opened in Timaru in October 1863, when Mr Fussell, who had landed in Taranaki in 1853. and had been employed in " the Public W r orks Department in Christchurch, was sent down with a stock of maps and stationery, to give information to purchasers, and to receive applications and forward them to Christehurch. Complaint had been made that the journey to Christchurch was tedious and dangerous, and it could be avoided if an office were opened at Timaru. The late C. R. Shaw was then the Government Surveyor in the district, and he had been accustomed to give Saturdays to that kind of office work. The first office was in a building of Ralph Simpson's, "opposite Harrison's bakery and brewery," i.e., near the corner of Cannon Street; then a cob place in Barnard Street; next a wooden office on the present Courthouse site; and finally in the stone building left vacant by the decease ,of the Board of Works when the Provinces were abolished.