Betterment Schemes.

He would now refer to the proposals which had been made for the betterment of the people. They all knew what the term "betterment" meant. Years ago when he was in England he remembered reading with much interest about these proposals in the New Zealand papers. He was then considering the advantages of New Zealand as a place for settlement. Even in those days he was a land nationaliser but he was a single-taxer now. There was a difference between the two things. He was interested in a proposal of Mr. Rolleston, that when the North Island Trunk Railway was carried through the then waste lands, a portion of the extra value given to the country through which the line would pass should be taken for the public purse. A similar principle had been embodied by the present Government in some of their legislation. Then they inaugurated what had got to be known as their "eternal lease"; really the "lease in perpetuity" system. By this means men were enabled to take sections of Crown lands, the Government granting leases for 999 years at a rental of four per cent. per annum upon the present selling value of the land, with no provision for re-valuation, however valuable the land might become before the period of the lease terminated. He was not going to say more about that now, but only wished to show that people generally did not consider the present state of affairs in reference to the land was altogether satisfactory. The suggestion by the Premier of making cheap loans to small farmers to assist them in cultivating the land came under the same category. A few weeks ago in the Auckland Diocesan Synod a fellow-towns-man, Mr. Upton read a paper, in which he advocated certain alterations in the law of primogeniture and other proposals in order to prevent the lands of the country from falling into the hands of a few.