A State Lottery.

Thames Star, Volume XX, Issue 6131, 29 November 1888, Page 4

A State Lottery.

There are loud and just complaints of the manner in which the public lands of ;ihe. colony are being gambled away at pment', The Minister of Lands, in his anxiety to see settlement revired and at the same time to obviate the evils of oTer speculation, has rushed into the other extreme and is Riving away land by means of a sort of scramble in which the lucky ones get some wonderful prizes, but the public bare no chance and the Treasury is regularly bilked. In order to save land buyers from themselves, to prevent their bidding ruinous prices in the excitement of an auction, he has devised a system under which the land is sacrificed in any case, and it is a matter of pure chance who gets the benefit. The price is fixed at about a fourth of what the land is honestly worth in the open market, and then the sections are disposed of by lot among the applicao ts. There applicants may be many or few- They may coDsi6t of a number of different persons, or they may consist of the same persons- under a number of different aliases. It is quite the ordinary practice for four or five members of ona family to

pnt in an application for a Eicgle section. If others who are after the same section are

up to the move, they do the same thing. They put in their own application, and they also press into their service their wife and their children and their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. But if they are not up to the move, they are simply out of the competition, unless by the barest accident. Suppose there is a section of 500 acres put up at 30s an acre. It is worth fully £4 10s, so that there is a prize of £1500 to be given away. Jones, Brown and Snooks are aware of this, and they determine to apply for the section. But Jones and Brown have been there before. .Accordingly the Commissioner receives applications from Thomas Bullock Jones, Angelina Maria Jones, Augustus Flantagenet de Beeswax Jones, asd Concertina Suiannab Jones. Brown goes one better. The Commissioner also receives applications from William Vankyke Brown, Georgiana Dunn Brown, William Vandyke Brown, Junr., Henry Dunn Brown, ami Olive Green nee Brown. The unhappy Snooks puts in a solitary application in his own name. The Browns, being in a majority, have the best chance, and the section falls to Wil« Ham Vandyke, Junr. But the Joneses are on the alert to point out an informality. The youthful Vandyke bas been too lucky by half. He was (nominally) the possessor of a large area of land in the same district before, and this 500 acres brings his estate over the legal limit. He is therefore disqualified, and the coveted section falls to one of the Joneses, it matters not which. The Jones family, who, perhaps are rich people already, thus get a gift of £1,500 of public money. That is to say, they get a property worth £2,250 for £750. This is no exaggeration or burlesque at all. It is what bas taken place quite recently, and is taking place - at every land sale. We know of instances where the fortunate winner of a prize in this Crown Land totalizator, has sold it at a thumping profit in the Land Office, and walked off with more cash than he could have earned by honest labor in a year. We do not blame the applicants. A Government who behave so foolishly are fair game. The land laws of New Zealand have been the maddest muddle in the world for many years—ever since they ceased to be administered by the Provinces. But we do not think there has ever been anything quite so silly as this before. The Minister ought to see that he bas made a mistake, and ought to stop*it at once.-—Wellington Press.