SOME BONES OF CONTENTION
"Now who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten who in ears and eyes
Match me; we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that; whom shall my soul believe?"
During the ten years beginning in 1879 New Zealand finance was little
more than a series of attempts to avert deficits. In their endeavours
to raise the revenue required for interest payments on the still
swelling public debt, and the inevitably growing departmental
expenditure, various treasurers turned to the Customs. In raising
money by duties they received support both from those who wished to
protect local industries and from those who wished to postpone the
putting of heavy taxation upon land. Sir Harry Atkinson, the treasurer
who carried the chief protectionist duties, used to disclaim being
either a protectionist or a free-trader. The net result of various
conflicts has been a tariff which is protectionist, but not highly
protectionist. The duties levied on New Zealand imports represent
twenty-four per cent. of the declared value of the goods. But the
highest duties, those on spirits, wine, beer, sugar, tea, and tobacco,
are not intentionally protectionist; they are simply revenue duties,
though that on beer has undoubtedly helped large and profitable
colonial breweries to be established. English free-traders accept as
an axiom that Customs duties cannot produce increased revenue and at
the same time stimulate local manufactures. Nevertheless, under the
kind of compromise by which duties of fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five
per cent. are levied on so many articles, it does come about that the
colonial treasurer gets his revenue while, sheltered by the fiscal
hedge, certain colonial manufactures steadily grow up. The factories
of the Colony now employ some 40,000 hands, and their annual output
is estimated at ten millions sterling. Much of this would, of course,
have come had the Colony's ports been free; but the factories engaged
in the woollen, printing, clothing, iron and steel, tanning, boot,
furniture, brewing, jam-making, and brick and tile-making industries
owe their existence in the main to the duties. Nor would it be fair to
regard the Colony's protection as simply a gigantic job managed by the
more or less debasing influence of powerful companies and firms. It
was adopted before such influences and interests were. It could not
have come about, still less could it last, were there not an honest
and widespread belief that without duties the variety of industries
needful to make a civilized and prosperous nation could not be
attained in young countries where nascent enterprises are almost
certain to be undercut and undersold by the giant capitalists and
cheaper labour of the old world. Such a belief may conceivably be
an economic mistake, but those who hold it need not be thought mere
directors or tools of selfish and corrupt rings. The Colony will not
adopt Free Trade unless a change comes over the public mind, of which
there is yet no sign; but it is not likely to go further on the road
towards McKinleyism. Its protection, such as it is, was the outcome
of compromises, stands frankly as a compromise, and is likely for the
present to remain as that.
So long as the Provinces lasted the General Assembly had little or
nothing to do with land laws. When, after abolition, the management of
the public estate came into the hands of the central authority, the
regulations affecting it were a bewildering host. Some fifty-four
statutes and ordinances had to be repealed. Nor could uniformity be
substituted at once, inasmuch as land was occupied under a dozen
different systems in as many different provincial districts. Only very
gradually could these be assimilated, and it was not until the year
1892 that one land act could be said to contain the law on the
subject, and to be equally applicable to all New Zealand. In the
meantime the statute-books of 1877, 1878, 1883, 1885 and 1887 bore
elaborate evidence of the complexity of the agrarian question, and the
importance attached to it. On it more than on any other difference
party divisions were based. Over it feelings were stirred up which
were not merely personal, local, or sectional. It became, and over an
average of years remained, the matter of chief moment in the Colony's
politics. Finance, liquor reform, labour acts, franchise extension may
take first place in this or that session, but the land question, in
one or other of its branches, is always second. The discussions on it
roused an enduring interest in Parliament given to no other subject.
The Minister of Lands ranks with the Premier and the Treasurer as one
of the leaders in every Cabinet. Well may he do so. Many millions of
acres and many thousands of tenants are comprised in the Crown leases
alone. Outside these come the constant land sales, the purchases from
the Maori tribes, and in recent years the buying back of estates from
private owners, and the settlement thereof. These form most, though
not all, of the business of the Minister of Lands, his officers, and
the administrative district boards attached to his department. If
there were no land question in New Zealand, there might be no Liberal
Party. It was the transfer of the land from the Provinces to the
central Parliament in 1876 which chiefly helped Grey and his
lieutenants to get together a democratic following.
[Illustration: A NEW ZEALAND SETTLER'S HOME
Photo by WINCKLEMAN]
Slowly but surely the undying agrarian controversy passed with the
Colony's progress into new stages. In the early days we have seen the
battle between the "sufficient price" of Gibbon Wakefield and the
cheap land of Grey, the good and evil wrought by the former, the wide
and lasting mischief brought about by the latter. By 1876 price had
ceased to be the main point at issue. It was agreed on all hands that
town and suburban lands parted with by the Crown should be sold by
auction at fairly high upset prices; and that rural agricultural land
should be divided into classes--first, second, and third--and should
not be sold by auction, but applied for by would-be occupants prepared
to pay from £2 to 10s. an acre, according to quality. More and more
the land laws of the Colony were altered so as to favour occupation by
small farmers, who were not compelled to purchase their land for cash,
but permitted to remain State tenants at low rentals, or allowed to
buy the freehold by gradual instalments, termed deferred payments.
Even the great pastoral leaseholds were to some extent sub-divided as
the leases fell in. The efforts of the land reformers were for many
years devoted to limiting the acreage which any one person could
buy or lease, and to ensuring that any person acquiring land should
himself live thereon, and should use and improve it, and not leave it
lying idle until the spread of population enabled him to sell it at
a profit to some monopolist or, more often, some genuine farmer. As
early as 1856 Otago had set the example of insisting on an outlay
of 30s. an acre in improvement by each purchaser of public land.
Gradually the limiting laws were made more and more stringent, and
were partly applied even to pastoral leases. Now, in 1898, no person
can select more than 640 acres of first-class or 2,000 acres of
second-class land, including any land he is already holding. In other
words, no considerable landowner can legally acquire public land.
Pastoral "runs"--_i.e._, grazing leases--must not be larger than such
as will carry 20,000 sheep or 4,000 cattle, and no one can hold more
than one run. The attempts often ingeniously made to evade these
restrictions by getting land in the names of relatives, servants,
or agents are called "dummyism," and may be punished by
imprisonment--never inflicted--by fines, and by forfeiture of the land
"dummied."[1]
[Footnote 1: Many a good story is founded on the adventures of
land-buyers in their endeavours to evade the spirit and obey the
letter of land regulations. In 1891 a rhymester wrote in doggerel
somewhat as follows of the experiences of a selector who "took up" a
piece of Crown land--
"On a certain sort of tenure, which his fancy much preferred,
That convenient kind of payment which is known as the 'deferred.'
"Now the laws in wise New Zealand with regard to buying land,
Which at divers times and places have been variously planned,
Form a code that's something fearful, something wonderful and grand.
"You may get a thousand acres, and you haven't got to pay
Aught but just a small deposit in a friendly sort of way.
"But you mustn't own a freehold, and you mustn't have a run,
And you mustn't be a kinsman of a squatter owning one;
"But must build a habitation and contentedly reside,
And must satisfy the Land Board that you pass the night inside.
"For if any rash selector on his section isn't found
He is straightway doomed to forfeit all his title to the ground."]
The political battles over the land laws of New Zealand during
the sixteen years since 1882 have not, however, centred round the
limitation of the right of purchase, or insistence on improvements,
so much as round the respective advantages of freehold and perpetual
leasehold, and round the compulsory repurchase of private land for
settlement. Roughly speaking, the political party which has taken the
name of Liberal has urged on the adoption of the perpetual lease as
the main or sole tenure under which State lands should in the future
be acquired. As a rule the party which the Liberals call Conservative
has advocated that would-be settlers should be allowed to choose their
tenure for themselves, and to be leaseholders or freeholders as they
please. Then there have arisen, too, important questions affecting the
perpetual lease itself. Should the perpetual leaseholders retain the
right of converting at any time their leasehold into a freehold by
paying down the cash value of their farm, or should the State always
retain the fee simple? Next, if the State should retain this, ought
there to be periodical revisions of the rent, so as to reserve the
unearned increment for the public? Fierce have been the debates and
curious the compromises arrived at concerning these debatable points.
The broad result has been that the sale of the freehold of Crown
lands, though not entirely prohibited, has been much discouraged, and
that the usual tenure given now is a lease for 999 years at a rent
of four per cent. on the prairie value of the land at the time of
leasing. As this tenure virtually hands over the unearned increment to
the lessee, it is regarded by the advanced land reformers with mixed
feelings. From their point of view, however, it has the advantage of
enabling men with small capital to take up land without expending
their money in a cash purchase. Inasmuch, too, as transfers of a lease
can only be made with the assent of the State Land Board for the
district--which assent will only be given in case the transfer is to a
_bona fide_ occupier not already a landowner--land monopoly is checked
and occupancy for use assured. Meanwhile there is plenty of genuine
settlement; every year sees many hundred fresh homes made and tracts
reclaimed from the wilderness.
[Illustration: PICTON--QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S SOUND
Photo by HENRY WRIGHT.]
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.
[Illustration]