quality, and only one or two families resided on it; another estate was between 60,000 and 70,000 acres in area, and there was a resident population on it of between sixteen and seventeen persons.
Some time after the Ballance Ministry took office it agreed that its land policy should be:
- The conservation of the remaining Crown lands for genuine occupation on a true perpetual-lease system.
- A land tax of one penny in the pound on the unimproved land value of the colony, with a progressive land tax on large holdings.
- The repurchase of land for close settlement.
This is known as the “Ballance Policy.”
The Legislative Council would not accept the compulsory clauses in the Land Act of 1892, and, taking half measure, Sir John McKenzie allowed it to go on the Statute Book without those clauses. The re-purchase clauses became law, but experience showed Sir John that they were practically inoperative unless supported by compulsion. Nearly a million acres were offered to him in 1893, but most of the land was worthless for close settlement, or was valued too high. The first estate purchased under the Act of 1892, Pomahaka, in Otago, has never been successful. It is the worst land bargain the Government has ever made. Half of it remains unlet, and the note written against it in the land settlement tables of the Land Department’s annual report is still: “Position unsatisfactory, prospects poor.”
While Sir John McKenzie was trying to make his Act work without the compulsory purchase clauses, and was meeting with very little success, there was thrown into his hands, by Providence, no doubt, he thought, a large estate called Cheviot, 84,000 acres in extent, and twelve miles square, on the east coast of the South Island, between Canterbury and Marlborough. The year following the passing of the Act, the Government found itself involved in a dispute with the trustees of the late Hon. W. Robinson, the owner of this estate. In the new Land and Income Assessment Act, just passed by the Ballance
