for only a year after his village system came into operation, and as his successor did not give very much attention to the welfare of the settlements, they were not as successful as they would have been in better circumstances. On the whole, however, their establishment has been more than justified. The nature of their tenure has been altered by the present Liberal Party under the provisions of the Land Act of 1892, from perpetual-lease with re-valuations to lease-in-perpetuity (999 years) without re-valuation.
These two systems, perpetual-lease and village-settlement, mark distinct epochs in New Zealand’s land-settlement history. The next epoch was ushered in by Sir John McKenzie shortly after Mr. Seddon and he were taken into the Ballance Ministry. Mr. Seddon would have been the last to claim for himself a place as a land-reformer; but from the day he entered Parliament, close settlement and liberal land-laws were leading items on his political programmes, as his first speech in the House will show. He was always strongly opposed to the “land-grabbers” and “land-sharks,” and lost few opportunities of denouncing them as clogs on the colony’s progress. He joined with Sir John McKenzie in fierce and unrelenting attacks on big and almost useless estates. Checkered maps sent out from some of the land offices to show the result of the “gridironing” process, as it was called, on account of the strange appearance they presented, were compared by him to old cathedral windows. He never threw himself into the land question with the ardour that was shown by Sir John McKenzie. In the early days of his Ministerial work Mr. Seddon supported his colleagues in this direction, but did not attempt to lead. His simple doctrine was that land meant power, and he said repeatedly that as long as New Zealand kept her land for her people, she need never fear many of the ills that have overtaken other countries.
One of the troubles which beset the colony when the last Conservative Government gave place to the new order in 1891 was the increase of large holdings. Sir John McKenzie once described in Parliament large estate after large estate, splendid in its fertility, but carrying only a few human beings. One of these estates covered 40,000 acres; most of it was of magnificent
