MR STAFFORD ON COLONISATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 740, 6 October 1870, Page 3

MR STAFFORD ON COLONISATION.

♦ (From the Hansard, July 12.) I would make provision for settling those immigrants throughout the length and breadth of the country, especially upon the arterial lines of communication which it is proposed to construct, and in order to do so I should be prepared to walk over the heads of the whole of the existing land laws of New Zealand. Sir, there is a large part of the Middle Island of New Zealand familiar to me, where at the present time it is almost impossible for working men to obtain a place for the sole of their foot. Where whole districts have been carved out into large estates by the operation of a most pernicious Bystem of land laws — a system adopted in 1 853, and against which at the time I emphatically protested. Large estates have been allowed to accumulate, upon which nothing but sheep are [ allowed to run, while large portions of them are fit to maintain industrious settlers, lt behoves us, in connection with such a great scheme as that now initiated, to consider seriously whether we should not take power to resume portions of those large estate?, giving, of courae, a fair compensation for the lands taken back from those who are now, for the most part, in the profitless occupation of them. With very few exceptions, the occupation of those large estates has been not only profitless but ruinous to the possessors. I would settle along the line of arterial communication throughout the country, at intervals of not more than eight or ten miles, village communities, giving them — not a quarter or half-acre section, as may be sufficient for a village blacksmith or a village

publican— but village lotß of some three acres, and suburban lots of eight or ten acres each, upon certain, conditions of proprietorship and residence. I would attach to these communities considerable commons, not for the purpose of establishing a pastoral proprietary, but for the purpose of giving to each inhabi tant of the village community the means of maintaining a few cows. By some such scheme as that I would take care that the immigrants should not only be cared for on their passage out, but that they should be equally well cared for when they arrived in the colony. They should be attached to particular localities throughout the country by being employed on public works, and by giving them a permanent home on the land in the neighbourhood of those public works, thus enabling tbem to maintain themselves after the works were completed, by the crops they could raise from their own lands by the spade and plough.