Land in Class B.

Land in this class to be surveyed into blocks, varying from 1000 to 5000 acres each, and within each block a section of 320 acres to be surveyed suitable for a homestead.

The lease of each block for 14 or 21 years to be put up to auction, with the right to purchase the fee simple of the 320 acre section at any time, on payment of 30s. per acre, and the balance of the land at 30s. per acre at any time page 12 after the first seven years. No person to be allowed to take up more than one block of leasehold under this clause.

Leases to contain conditions to erect fence round outside boundaries of land, and no assignment of leases permitted for three years after issue.

The fee simple of every third or fourth block to be sold outright to the highest bidder, at public auction, at the upset price of 20s. per acre.

This system appears to possess these advantages:—

1st. The area of land is sufficient to enable the settler, with the smallest possible outlay of capital, to engage at once in stock farming.

The most valuable class of bonâ fide settler we can obtain is the man with a capital about sufficient to fence and stock such a farm, and he must not be hampered with compulsory improvement clauses, which would only swamp him. As soon as he can manage it, with the certainty of ultimately becoming the owner of the soil, he will proceed to improve the land, more particularly in any way which will enable him to carry more stock.

Those, indeed, among this class with a little more capital may be expected at once to begin sowing artificial grasses, and breaking up the best parts of their farms to lay down in permanent pasture.

The greater portion of the unsold lands of the province would come under this class, and would gradually be thus disposed of, bringing in a very large immediate yearly revenue, and settling a numerous and prosperous population: and not only would the people thrive, but the land by which they lived would thrive also.

2nd. The carrying capacity of the lands would, in a very few years, be doubled, and even trebled.

At present, a numerous population is being settled on the Deferred Payments System, on small farms of 200 acres each. In many cases, the settlers have not sufficient capital to stock their farms, and are forced by the conditions of their license to expend what little capital they may have in breaking up and cultivating their land. They immediately try to produce grain, and in a few years, with land impoverished and a diminished exchequer, they will do as in other colonies the settlers in like circumstances have done—sell their holdings to the squatter, who will turn their land to the only profitable use to which it can be put—viz., the growth of wool.

It is instructive to note that in South Australia, where a similar system has been in operation for many years, out of the first 100 settlers who took up land on the Deferred page 13 Payments System, above ninety have sold their land to the pastoral lessee, and those who followed them continue to act in a similar manner. So patent, even to a careless observer, is the effect in that Colony, that I have reason to believe the system will not outlive another session of Parliament. Grain can only be grown for a short time on virgin soil. So soon as that is exhausted, the land, by the operation of a natural law, falls into the hands of the stock farmer of large capital. It is only the possessor of considerable capital who can afford to retrieve the damage done to land by overcropping. He it is only who can wait the necessary time for his profits.

Instead then of forcing our bonâ fide settlers, by the smallness of their holdings and enforced conditions of culture to pursue a course of agriculture which experience has shown cannot possibly pay, would it not be wiser to alter our land policy, and make our bonâ fide settlers prosperous little squatters on their own account?

I imagine I can see at this point looks of pious horror from that numerous class of theorists who are so fond of protesting against the Colony being turned into a sheep-walk, and who insist upon the land carrying men and not sheep, but I submit that it lies upon these theorists to show that our colonists can be more profitably occupied in tilling the soil than they would be in some other employment.

The production of grain in greater quantity than is required for home consumption cannot continue very long in this Colony, and if we are desirous of ascertaining what number of the population can be profitably occupied in grain production, the following little calculation may give us an idea on the subject, so far as wheat is concerned. Take the population of the Province at say 100,000 persons, and allow each person to consume wheat, man, woman, and child, at the rate of 11b. per day, taking the average yield of 35 bushels per acre, 17,350 acres of wheat crop would supply the whole population of the Province with grain for a twelvemonth. In other words, some three or four farms near Oamaru, can grow all the grain wanted for the consumption of the entire community.

People who are so fascinated by the agricultural population question, appear quite to lose sight of the fact that although we cannot even exist without the customary visit from our baker and greengrocer, yet that it is a very small part of our entire wants that is supplied by these individuals. I have only to apply for a confirmation of this truth to the heads of families present. We have all shaken our heads page 14 over our grocers' bills, our drapers' bills, and tailors' bills, our upholsterers' bills, and indeed, over bills in general, but our baker's bill would not sit uneasily in our minds, even if we knew we had a half-year's account to meet next week.

The theory, then, which would set a large number of men to grow a loaf, which there is only one to eat, appears to me to carry with it its own condemnation.

A settlement, on the other hand, which would result on such a system as that we have sketched, would carry within itself the seeds of a general prosperity.

Land would require to be fenced, houses and woolsheds built all over the Province, and, as the wealth of the settlers increased, employment would be given in a variety of ways to others of the population.

We should thus have not only a prosperous class of settlers, but also an action in the right direction on the general prosperity.

Before leaving the matter of land in Class B., I have a few words to say in regard to selling the fee simple outright of every third or fourth block. This would secure a large immediate revenue, a matter of great importance. It would also secure a valuable class of settler—the man of considerable capital. I imagine that such men might purchase these blocks, and possibly take to such blanches of farming as rearing stud flocks, breeding draught horses, and other branches of farming requiring large capital.

They would be useful in supplying their less wealthy neighbours with good stock, and their method of farming might teach useful lessons. The intermixture of men of wealth with our rural population has also many other advantages, which will doubtless occur to you, but which it might be out of place to further refer to here.

My preference for the lease for 21 years, with purchasing clause, rather than the sale of the fee simple outright, is based upon the belief that the most desirable class of settlers does not as a rule possess a capital sufficient to purchase the fee simple immediately, in addition to that required for stocking the land, and moreover, on the fact, that by following this course, we may delay, and perhaps altogether defeat, the efforts of very large capitalists to secure large areas of land in blocks. By refusing permission to assign the leases for at least three years, we should have a chance of raising a strong middle-class yeomanry of stock fanners. These men would not be ready to part with their farms to capitalists. It is the man who finds that he is farming at a disadvantrge, that he is going down hill, or at best standing still, who is ready to sell his land. The class page 15 of settlers I picture to myself would have no inducement to sell, but very many to hold.

I am not of the number of those who advocate a system of perpetual leasing and re-leasing of the public lands, the fee simple being retained by the State.

The uncertainty of the tenure, and the liability of the tenant to have the value of his property constantly altered by the freaks of Colonial legislation, would act most disastrously on production and on the improvement of land.

To shew the lengths to which the Colonial legislature will go in this direction, we have only to look over the statutes passed last Session to find an instance. Up till the 12th day of October last any pastoral lessee of Crown lands within a gold-field was entitled to receive as compensation for the cancellation of his lease, under the 16th section of the Goldfields Act, such sum of money as might be awarded by two arbitrators and their umpire, without limit.

This right has run with their leases nearly ten years. When men have bought runs in gold-fields, they have taken into account this right, and have paid accordingly. On the 12th October last, the General Assembly solemnly decreed that this right should no longer run, but that the compensation should be limited to 2s. 6d. per acre.

Bearing in mind that the General Assembly represents the State, and that the State is practically one of the parties to the lease, and that the alteration is one very ruinous to the poor tenant and very advantageous to the State, I am afraid that our confidence in the forbearance, and our belief in the tenderness of conscience, of the said State cannot be very firm, and that we will prefer not to put our names, if possible, to documents where it is one of the high contracting parties.

If, when A and B enter into a contract, A has power at any time to alter the terms and conditions of the contract at will, the game appears to me to be very much in the nature of that known as "Heads I win, tails you lose."

For this reason alone, then, if for no other, I could not contemplate a proposal to limit the estate of settlers to a leasehold with anything like satisfaction; but I imagine that there are other, and even more serious objections, to the system in the back-ground. The effect on the character of our settlers would, I hold, be pernicious. The desire to possess and enjoy a home of one's own is common to high and low, rich and poor alike. It is one of the very strongest of our social instincts, and it serves to brace and nerve us to many acts of self-denial and thrift. The hope of one day possessing land of his own, and handing down his little pro- page 16 perty to his posterity, lends additional power, whether of arm or brain, to any man who has to win his way in the world.

Take this hope away, and you take away one of the very strongest props to virtue, and leave the man to labour on with scarce an aim in life.

By granting a power of purchase, too, we hold out every inducement to the settler to treat his land well. We directly encourage the suppression of such pests as rabbits, and such weeds as thistles, and make it for the man's advantage to keep his land in productive order.

The system of granting only leasehold estates, the State retaining the fee simple, may, and indeed does, commend itself to the minds of a few theorists, who love to propound startling novelties in morals, politics, and social science; but I venture to hope and to believe that their theories may remain theories still, and that we may continue to have in this colony a large and prosperous yeoman class farming their own lands.

Any attempt to consider exhaustively the relative merits of leasing and selling the public lands would occupy very much more time than I have at my disposal to-night, but it is possible I may take up this subject on a future occasion.

Meantime it may be well to remember that it is a very much easier thing for us to perceive the evils which attach to any existing order of things than truly to appreciate the benefits such an order confers or perpetuates; and on the other hand that it is a very easy matter to advance plausible arguments in favour of some contemplated course of action, either in business or politics, which, if actually attempted as an experiment, would prove altogether a failure.

We are all familiar with the schoolboys' efforts to exhibit the defects of the British Constitution, and many of us are acquainted, to our cost, with the fact that it is an easy thing to make an undertaking look very fair indeed on paper, but quite another to find it equally successful in fact.