POLITICAL NOTES & NOTIONS

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 37, 28 May 1881, Page 400

POLITICAL NOTES & NOTIONS

Returning to the Land, It will be generally admitted that the evil resulting from the possession of large tracts of country by a few persons — provided always that they improve them — is largely counterbalanced in the early days of a colony by the good they also do in helping on its general progress. The population is then too small to feel the pressure. But the population of New Zeoland is rapidly increasing, and if timely steps are not taken we shall have great estates handed down under unnatural, although legal, restrictions to successive generations of proprietors unable to break up their property or to deal with it in any way contrary to the will of some dead and forgotten ancestor. We shall have all the complications of life interests, marriage settlements and those charges which the law sanctions in England andwhich it also sanctions here. Under the influence of these laws we shall build up a political power and unite vested and powerful interests fatal to the diffusion of comfort and independence among the mass of the people. A very rich class at one end of the scale and a very low and impoverished class at the other. That is the prospect before our successors if we do not act wisely and nip the evil in the bud while we have unanimity and strength enough to do so.