Quite as keen has been the fighting over the principle of State repurchase of private lands with or without the owner's consent. It was a favourite project of Sir George Grey's; but it did not become law until he had left public life, when it was carried by the most successful and determined of the Liberal Ministers of Lands, John McKenzie, who has administered it in a way which bids fair to leave an enduring mark on the face of the Colony. Under this law £700,000 has been spent in buying-forty-nine estates, or portions of estates, for close settlement. The area bought is 187,000 acres. A few of these have, at the time of writing, not yet been thrown open for settlement; on the rest 2,252 human beings are already living. They pay a rent equal to 5.2 per cent. on the cost of the land to the Government. Even taking into account interest on the purchase money of land not yet taken up, a margin remains in favour of the Treasury. Nearly 700 new houses and £100,000 worth of improvements testify to the genuine nature of the occupation. As a rule there is no difficulty in buying by friendly arrangement between Government and proprietor. The latter is commonly as ready to sell as the former to buy. The price is usually settled by bargaining of longer or shorter duration. Twice negotiations have failed, and the matter has been laid before the Supreme Court, which has statutory power to fix the price when the parties fail to agree. It must be remembered that as a rule large holdings of land mean something quite different in New Zealand from anything they signify to the English mind. In England a great estate is peopled by a more or less numerous tenantry. In New Zealand it is, as a rule, not peopled at all. Sheep roam over its grassy leagues, cared for by a manager and a few shepherds. Natural and proper as this may be on the wilder hills and poorer soils, it is easy to see how unnatural and intolerable it appears in fertile and accessible districts. In 1891 there were nearly twelve and a half million acres held in freehold. Of these rather more than seven millions were in the hands of 584 owners, none of whom held less than five thousand acres. In spite of land-laws, land-tax, and time, out of thirty-four million acres of land occupied under various tenures, twenty-one millions are held in areas of more than five thousand acres.
Much the largest of the estates purchased by the Government came into their hands in an odd way, and not under the Act just described. The Cheviot property was an excellent example of what the old cheap-land regulations led to. It was a fine tract of 84,000 acres of land, on which up to 1893 some forty human beings and about 60,000 sheep were to be found. Hilly but not mountainous, grassy, fertile, and lying against the sea-shore, it was exactly suited for fairly close settlement. Under the provisions of the land-tax presently to be described, a landowner who thinks the assessors have over-valued his property may call upon the Government to buy it at his own lower valuation. A difference of £50,000 between the estimate of the trustees who held the Cheviot estate and that of the official valuers caused the former to give the Government of the day the choice between reducing the assessment or buying the estate. Mr. McKenzie, however, was just the man to pick up the gauntlet thus thrown down. He had the Cheviot bought, cut up, and opened by roads. A portion was sold, but most leased; and within a year of purchase a thriving yeomanry, numbering nearly nine hundred souls and owning 74,000 sheep, 1,500 cattle, and 500 horses, were at work in the erstwhile empty tract. Four prosperous years have since added to their numbers, and the rent they pay more than recoups the Treasury for the interest on its outlay in the purchase and settlement.
In 1886, John Ballance, then Minister of Lands, made a courageous endeavour to place a number of workmen out of employment on the soil in what were known as village settlements. In various parts of the Colony blocks of Crown land were taken and divided into allotments of from twenty to fifty acres. These were let to the village settlers on perpetual lease at a rental equal to five per cent. on the prairie value of the land. Once in a generation there was to be a revision of the rental. The settlers, many of whom were quite destitute, were helped at first not only by two years' postponement of their rent, but by small advances to each to enable them to buy seed, tools, food, and building material. Ballance was fiercely attacked in 1887 for his experiment, and his opponents triumphantly pointed to the collapse of certain of his settlements. Others, however, turned out to be successes, and by last accounts the village settlers and their families now number nearly five thousand human beings, occupying 35,000 acres in allotments of an average size of twenty-four acres. Most of them divide their time between tilling their land and working for wages as shearers, harvesters, or occasionally mechanics. Some £27,000 has been lent them, of which they still owe about £24,000. As against this the Government has been paid £27,000 in rent and interest, and the improvements made by the settlers on their allotments are valued at about £110,000, and form very good security for their debts to the Treasury. Of late years Mr. McKenzie has been aiding the poorer class of would-be farmers by employing them at wages to clear the land of which they afterwards become tenants. The money paid them is, of course, added to the capital value of the land.
For the last five years Liquor has disputed with Land the chief place in the public interest. It has introduced an element of picturesque enthusiasm and, here and there, a passion of hatred rarely seen before in New Zealand politics. It brought division into the Liberal Party in 1893, at the moment when the Progressive movement seemed to have reached its high-water mark, and the feeling it roused was found typified in the curious five years' duel between Mr. Seddon and Sir Robert Stout, which began in 1893 and ended only with Sir Robert's retirement at the beginning of the present year. It has strangely complicated New Zealand politics, is still doing so, and is the key to much political manoeuvring with which it might seem to have nothing whatever to do.
For many years total abstainers in New Zealand have grown in numbers. Though for the last thirty years drinking and drunkenness have been on the decline among all classes of colonists, and though New Zealanders have for a long time consumed much less alcohol per head than Britons do, that has not checked the growth of an agitation for total prohibition, which has absorbed within itself probably the larger, certainly the more active, section of temperance reformers.[1] In 1882 a mild form of local option went on to the statute-book, while the granting of licenses was handed over to boards elected by ratepayers. For the next ten years no marked result roused attention. Then, almost suddenly, the Prohibition movement was seen to be advancing by leaps and bounds. Two clergymen, the Rev. Leonard Isitt and the Rev. Edward Walker, were respectively the voice and the hand of the Prohibitionists. As a speaker Mr. Isitt would perhaps be the better for a less liberal use of the bludgeon, but his remarkable energy and force on the platform, and his bold and thorough sincerity, made him a power in the land. Mr. Walker had much to do with securing tangible results for the force which Mr. Isitt's harangues aroused, and in which the Liberal Party was to a large extent enrolled. In 1893 the temperance leaders thought themselves strong enough to make sweeping demands of Parliament. Ballance, the Liberal Premier, had just died; his party was by many believed to be disorganized. In Sir Robert Stout, the Brougham of New Zealand public life, the Prohibitionists had a spokesman of boundless energy and uncommon hitting power in debate. He tabled a Bill briefly embodying their complete demands, and it was read a second time. Old parliamentary hands knew full well that the introduction of so controversial and absorbing a measure in the last session before a General Election meant the sacrifice for that year, at least, of most of the policy bills on labour, land, and other matters. But, whether it would or would not have been better to postpone Licensing Reform to a Parliament elected to deal with it, as matters came to stand, there was no choice. The Ministry tried to deal with the question on progressive, yet not unreasonable, lines. A Local Option Bill was passed, therefore, and nearly every other important policy measure, except the Female Franchise Bill, went by the board—blocked or killed in one Chamber or the other. The hurried Government licensing measure of 1893 had of course to be expanded and amended in 1895 and 1896. Now, though it has failed to satisfy the more thorough-going Prohibitionists, it embraces a complete and elaborate system of local option. Except under certain extraordinary conditions, the existing number of licenses cannot be increased. The licensing districts are coterminous with the Parliamentary electorates. The triennial licensing poll takes place on the same day as the General Election, thus ensuring a full vote. Every adult male and female resident may vote: (1) to retain all existing licenses; or (2) to reduce the number of licenses, and (3) to abolish all licenses within the district. To carry No. 3 a majority of three to two is requisite. No compensation is granted to any licensed house thus closed. Two local option polls have been held under this law. The first resulted in the closing of some seventy houses and the carrying of a total prohibition of retail liquor sales in the district of Clutha. Limited Prohibition has been the law in Clutha for some four years. The accounts of the results thereof conflict very sharply. In the writer's opinion—given with no great confidence—the consumption of beer and wine there has been greatly reduced, that of spirits not very greatly. There is much less open drunkenness. In certain spots there is sly grog-selling with its concomitants of expense, stealthy drinking, and perjury. The second general Licensing Poll was held in December, 1896. Then for the first time it was taken on the same day as the Parliamentary elections. In consequence the Prohibitionist vote nearly doubled. But the Moderate vote more than trebled, and the attacking abstainers were repulsed all along the line, though they, on their side, defeated an attempt to recapture Clutha.
[Footnote 1: In 1884 the consumption of liquor among New Zealanders per head was—beer, 8.769 gallons; wine, 0.272 gallons; spirits, 0.999 gallons. The proportions had fallen in 1895 to 7.421 gallons of beer, 0.135 of wine, and 0.629 of spirits.]
The Prohibitionists are now disposed, it is believed, to make the fullest use in future of their right to vote for the reduction of the number of licensed houses. They still, however, object to the presence of the Reduction clause in the Act, and unite with the publicans in the wish to restrict the alternatives at the Local Option polls to two—total Prohibition and the maintenance of all existing licensed houses. They have also decided to oppose having the Licensing Poll on General Election day. Strongest of all is their objection to the three to two majority required to carry total and immediate Prohibition. These form the line of cleavage between them and a great many who share their detestation of the abuses of the liquor traffic.
