C—No. 1.

constant inspection of their proceedings as would prevent this abuse would amount to more than the saving effected by getting the stone gratis. The Commissioners do not doubt that there is considerable truth in these representations, yet they cannot but consider it would have been better to have left the inhabitants of Oamaru the real or supposed benefit of these quarries, and the opportunity of determining by their own experience whether the reserves were valuable or not. The purchase above mentioned proves that they had very little doubt of their value at the time it was made. Nor does it say much for the security for the self-management of their own local affairs by the inhabitants of a district, given by Provincial Institutions, when it is found that in spite of the wishes of the inhabitants of a flourishing and important town, the property rightfully belonging to the townsmen has to be bought by themselves from the central authorities of the Province, at the price put upon it by the latter. Another complaint was that the land in the neighbourhood of Oamaru had been sold in large blocks, and at periods unsuited to the wants and means of bond fide settlers, so that 14,000 acres of the very pick of the land had fallen into the hands of the Australian Land Company. It was argued that it would have been much better to have had forty or fifty families settled upon the land, instead of the agent of a great Company. On the other hand, it should be noted that the Company employs more than 200 people, keeps forty or fifty steam threshing and other machines at work, and has two fields of from 1,100 to 1,400 acres each, from which more than a hundred thousand bushels of wheat were reaped last year —the fourth or fifth crop, by the way, without manure. These realized facts are something to weigh against the hypothetical assumption of possible population above-mentioned. But this case involves the whole of the vast question as to the relative advantages of settling a country with capitalist-farmers and employed labourers on the one hand, or with cottier-farmers in the other. For decision the Commissioners may refer to the voluminous publications on the Wakefield theory of colonization. The sales complained of were perfectly legal. VII. —Constitution of Waste Lands Boakd. The Commissioners have now gone through what appears to them the most serious of the grievances, more or less real, respecting the administration of the Waste Lands brought under their notice. There remains, however, to be noticed one great evil connected with this administration in Otago —one indeed which, while it exists, must naturally cause dissatisfaction, even where no practical wrong may have been done, because it offers such great temptation to take advantage of the great facility the law gives for abuse, that suspicions will be sure to be excited, whether well grounded or not, that the abuse is of frequent occurrence. This evil is the constitution of the Waste Lands Board. The Board consists of a Chief Commissioner and four others, all appointed by the Superintendent of the Province. So far, the law is at fault, and the Commissioners would not have found it necessary to comment upon it; but the mode in which the power given is exercised, is distinctly a question of administration of the law. Now, the established custom in Otago appears to be the appointment by the Superintendent of the Members of his own Executive. Mr. Driver, a Member both of the Provincial Council and the House of Representatives, brought this subject: under the notice of the Commissioners. He objected on the ground that the Board " is composed of a political body, consisting wholly of the Members of the Executive Government of the Province. It is ludicrous to hear this body, as I have frequently done, referring cases for the opinion of the Government. The temptation to use the immense power given by their right to administer the Waste Lands of the Province for political purposes and objects is obvious." This brief and very pertinent remark has a reach and applicability far beyond the Province of Otago. Had it indeed been the intentional and deliberate object of any lawgivers or of any Legislature to provide the most effective means for jobbery and corruption their imagination could devise, it is difficult to conceive they could have surpassed what has actually been done in this matter. To give to persons depending for their position and places on popular 6

Evidence No. 105.

21

LANDS OF OTAGO.