The Land Fund may fairly be called on for an acreage contribution to the ordinary revenue, at the time when the land, although in its wild state, ceases to be public property. As, through the vestiges of varying Provincial institutions, various prices are paid for public land, an uniform percentage on the revenue would not be a fair arrangement. Where the advocates and practitioners of a "sufficient price" have proved that the largest revenue, with the least diminution to the public estate, accrues to the State where their system has in a great measure preserved the land from monopoly hurtful to the public interests, the purchasers should not be called upon to contribute the same proportion of that locally valuable revenue to the general fund, as those who, by insisting on a "cheap land" system, have squandered the public estate away, so as to destroy their land revenue and lock up the land at the same time. Mr. Macandrew's proposal in the House of an equal acreage contribution from the public land sales throughout the Colony, appears to me to meet the justice of the case much better. I do not pretend to fix the rate per acre of the contribution. I think he suggested 2s. 6d. an acre. The Colonial Treasurer has estimated the probable receipts from land sales throughout New Zealand at £743,000 for the financial year page 29 1877-78. In this estimate he sets down the receipts in Canterbury at only £300,000; but they promise to be much larger. That sum only represents a sale of 150,000 acres. The land sales "during the last twelve months" reckoning from the end of August—which includes two months of the financial year—amounted to 323,720 acres. The year's sales are likely to amount to at least 500,000 acres, Half-a-crown an acre would thus yield £62,500 from Canterbury alone. I have no means of checking Major Atkinson's estimates of receipts in the other Land districts. "Errors and omissions excepted," however, I will take his estimate in all but Canterbury, and deduce the acreage from what I suppose to be the price. The result will, if I am right in the prices to be paid elsewhere than in Canterbury, be as follows:—

District.	Estimated Receipts.	Price per Acre.			Acres Sold.	Contribution at 2s. 6d. Per Acre.
	£	£	s.	d.		£
Auckland	120,000	0	10	0	240,000	30,000
Taranaki	23,000	0	10	0	46,000	5,750
Wellington	60,000	1	0	0	60.000	7,500
Hawke's Bay	15,000	0	10	0	30,000	3,750
Nelson	10,000	0	10	0	20,000	2,500
Marlborough	5,000	0	10	0	10,000	1,250
Canterbury	1,000,000	2	0	0	500,000	62,500
Westland	10,000	1	0	0	10,000	1,250
Otago	200,000	1	10	0	133,000	16.625
Totals £	1,443,000	£1	7	6	1,019,000	£131,125