Land Laws Reform.

It was as Minister of Lands in the Stout-Vogel Government that Mr. Ballance first had an untrammelled hand in shaping a settlement policy of a liberal and in fact revolutionary character, the beginning of the socialistic programme which Richard Seddon and John McKenzic expanded and elaborated in the Nineties. He consolidated the land laws, and framed additions which made the land more accessible to settlers. Village settlements were from the beginning a pet scheme with Ballance. The plan generally was good; the reasons why such methods of attaching small-farmers to a land sometimes failed was that unsuitable and remote districts were chosen for the experiments. But he succeeded in giving many working-men near large centres an opportunity of obtaining suitable areas of land where they could grow food and develop their longings for a healthy self-reliant life for themselves and their families.

It was in the late Eighties, when Ballance was foremost in opposition to the Atkinson Government, that a number of afterwards notable men formed a strong Young New Zealand Party. John McKenzie, Joseph Ward, W. P. Reeves, James Mills were among its most prominent members; Ballance and Seddon by this time were veterans of the Liberal cause.