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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24

(Letters, &c., Referred to in No. 5.)

(Letters, &c., Referred to in No. 5.)

Province of Otago, N.Z., Superintendent's Office, Dunedin,

Sir,—Referring to your telegram in reply to mine, requesting you officially to contradict the rumour current here, that the Colonial Government had intimated its desire that the Waste Lands Board should refuse to grant certain applications for land recently proclaimed by the Provincial Governments under the delegated powers, open for sale at 20s. an acre, I much regret that while you neither deny nor admit the rumour alluded to, you express your approval of the action of the Waste Lands Board in declining to grant the applications, and as a necessary inference your approval of the serious consequences which that action involves. Those consequences are concisely set forth in a memorandum addressed by me to the Waste Lands Board, a copy page 23 of which is forwarded herewith, as also the Chief Surveyor's Report as to the quality of the laud referred to.

I need scarcely say that the result of the Board's action will have a most injurious effect upon the labour market during the ensuing winter, if, indeed, it does not throw thousands of men out of employment.

The Provincial Executive, charged as it is with the peace, order, and good government of this portion of the Colony, has a right to expect the support of the Colonial Government; as it is, it cannot but feel that it is not only receiving scant aid from, but that it is being thwarted by, the Colonial Executive.

You say that "the plan by which the application was confined to the leaseholders was one which must be disapproved by any person who believes that the law should be administered in accordance with its spirit and intention, as well as with its letter." As to this, I can only say that the "plan" was precisely the same verbatim, el literatim, as has been adopted in similar cases for years past. Indeed, if I mistake not, it was first adopted when the present Premier was at the head of the Provincial Executive. I refer you to no less than eighteen Proclamations—*as per foot—in proof of this assertion, from which it will be perceived that the power of application is not confined to the leaseholder.

I may say further that there is good reason to believe that the applicants in question would have preferred that the land should have been put up to auction under section 150 Otago "Waste Lands Act, in which case there can be little doubt but they would have become the purchasers at ten shillings an acre.

I have, &c.,

J. Macandkew,

Superintendent of Otago.

The Honorable the Colonial Secretary,

Wellington.