should be taken up and occupied for four years without any rent whatever being taken from the tenants; for the next four years those tenants should be charged only 2 per cent., and for some succeeding years only 3 per cent. During the whole term, including renewals, the rent was not to exceed 4 per cent. on the capital value of the holding at any time.
He held that the State should not look to the rent it exacted from the tenant. He had seen many instances where there was really no value in the land itself. The value was created by the tenants going upon it. It had practically only a nominal value until it was improved by the tenants’ efforts; and he did not see why, when the State came to renew the lease, the tenant should be penalised for his improvements. He went further, and said that the condition insisting upon the tenant residing on the land should not be exacted until the land had been roaded and proper approaches had been given to the land, so that the settler could take his family straight on to his section. Besides that, he did not see why the settler should suffer greatly from the lack of facilities for obtaining what are now regarded as necessaries. He would have erected schools on the estates, so that settlers could in every instance get education for their children. He thought that the residential conditions were altogether too severe, and he intended to bring about changes which would relieve settlers who found that their rents were too high, and would enable shopkeepers and artizans who had saved a little money to “go in for a bit of land.”
He submitted to the House in 1905 a long set of motions, asking it to come to some decision on several aspects of the land question, in order that a Bill could be introduced to bring about any changes desired. He first asked the House whether it considered that the lease-in-perpetuity should be repealed, and that a perpetual lease, for not less than 50 years or more than 99 years, should be substituted, with re-valuation. He did not, of course, propose to interfere in any way with those who hold present leases-in-perpetuity. He recognised that contracts had been entered into by the State with those tenants, and that the contracts could not be broken or repudiated; but he asked Parliament to decide whether those tenants should have the
