Land Settlement.

Recognising the fact that the welfare of a new country depends upon the profitable settlement of its lands, especially by a class of small yeomanry, he was always in favour of peasant and small farm holdings. Year after year he attempted to bring forward in the House of Representatives his "Land for Settlement Bill," which provided among other things for the purchase of large estates from private owners for the purpose of cutting them up into smaller holdings, and for giving assistance by the advance of Government debentures, secured upon such lands, to bona fide settlers, thus utilising the public credit towards the productive settlement of the country, and the absorption of surplus population upon the land.