Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price 1d. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27,1886. The Land of Promise.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XIX, Issue 1889, 27 September 1886, Page 2

Wairarapa Standard Published Tri-weekly, Price Id. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27,1886. The Land of Promise.

Some of our immigration agents who have been sent by Mr Ballance to Great Britain to tell the people there of the great advantages held ont by this colony to British farmers and laborers, rather overdo their work. A Mr Arthur Clayden is one of these agents This gentleman has been giving an address to a Farmers’ Club in England about New Zealand. Amongst other statements he remarked“ We have absolutely free trade in New Zealand. It is as easy to buy or sell an acre of land as it is a oow or a horse. Thanks to the admirable Land Transfer Act ofthei.te Sir B. Torrens, aU the cumber, some abominations which impede the sale of land here are swept away.” Now this statement is, to a great extent, untrue. It is certainly the case that a Land Transfer Act is in force in the colony, but only a certain proportion of the existing real estate has been brought under its provisions. A very large amount of land—town properties, town acres, country sections, farms and stations—when bought or sold, still require to be transferred under the old system of conveyancing, with the usual deeds, stamps, and lawyers’ charges. When a man buys a property which has been bought under the Land Transfer Act, the seller has to convey it to him by a deed which a lawyer duly prepares, and the legal consultation, &0., as well as the deed itself, usually run at from £3 3s to £5 ss. It is not therefore, in many cases, so easy, expeditious, and inexpensive a transaction “ to bay or sell an acre of land as it is a cow or horse.” Mr Clayden gives a fairly accurate account of the great progress made by colonial industries and manufactures. Then be specially addresses the English farmers in the following terms :

My mission to England is exclusively for the purpose of influencing the emigration of British farmers to the colony. Farming in New Zealand to-day is pretty much the same as farming elsewhere. There is little money in it. The low prices of produce which have made such havoc with British agriculture are telling equally disastrously in other parts of the world. New Zealand has not escaped the blow. There is, however, all the difference in the icorld between the ayricultural depression in a country [where high rents are paid and all hinds of rates and taxes and the same visitation in a colony like New Zealand. In the former case it means ruin, as many a British farmer knows to his cost. In the latter it rarely means more than a temporary check to bis prosperity. The new barn will not be built, or that latest reaping machine will not be bought for another year. The wife will not get a new carpet for the best room, and the promised piano will not be had. That is about all. Except in cases where a man has overbought himself, and is consequently hopelessly entangled in the money lender’s toils, I know of no cases of real distress in New Zealand consequent on the depression. Mr Clay den tries to create the impression in the mind of the British Farmer that while he has to pay “ all kinds of rates and taxes,” in England, he would be free from these burdens in New Zealand. Tomake statements of this kind to an English audience is a most wicked attempt at deception. Mr Hayden knows perfectly well what is the real state of the case in the colony, and his misrepresentations are, therefore, all the more unscrupulous. The farmer and country settler in this colony is quite familiar with " all kinds of rates and taxes.” There is the Property Tax to begin with, which falls pretty heavy upon country settlers. Then there are the local rates which mount up to a tolerable sum. In addition to all this, the country settler—and, for that matter, the colonists generally—are heavily taxed by Customs Duties on nearly every description of imported articles. If Sjr Eobert Stout and Sir Julius Vogel had been allowed to carry out their schemes, the Custom? Duties would have been made so intolerably repressive that the country would have been hardly fit to live in for i,e small farmers and the working classes. The fact is that the colonists of New Zealand are subjected to a crushing amount of taxation in every shape and form, and it is shameful that an immigratiou agent sent home by the Government, as Mr Clay? den has been, should try to make English farmers believe that there is little taxation in the shape of rates and other imports. No doubt the farmers and country settlers in this colony can manage to get along despite heavy taxation, but they have a struggle to do it With better prices for produce, the farmers and country settlers will experience more prosperous times, aud, in any cue, they are better off than the farmers in England. The colony wants additional popj'um of the farmer class from Great Ifniain, but such people should never be induced to come out by making misleading statements to them of the character used by Mr Claydeu.