"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.
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 L2 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.
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 L700,000 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 L100,000 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 L50,000 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 L27,000 has been lent them, of which they still owe about L24,000. As against this the Government has been paid L27,000 in rent and interest, and the improvements made by the settlers on their allotments are valued at about L110,000, 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.