Page:Our New Zealand Cousins.djvu/314

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Our New Zealand Cousins.

extended to other provinces—to be occupied on perpetual leases for a first term of thirty years, and a second term of twenty-one, without any right of acquiring a freehold. Rental is to be based on the capital value of the land, the minimum price being two per cent, per acre, and the maximum area twenty acres to any applicant, who will get it without competition, as priority will be determined by lot. Among the essential conditions are residence, cultivation, and that the land shall not be subdivided or sublet. Government will contribute 20l. towards building the settler's house, and, if land is bush, will give the average price to enable the selector to clear and sow the section in grass. The State will then charge on value of the land five per cent, per year, and on the sum advanced for the improvement the same rate. A start will be made in the middle of June of the present year (1886) to make the initial experiment at Parihaka, and the Government state the settlements will be located near towns or railways where labour is attainable, and where the land is suitable for small industries."

To active, intelligent artisans, and workers who have no capital but their own stout hearts and strong, willing limbs, these colonies present a field for their enterprise, such as is nowhere else existent at this time upon the earth. We have no room for the intemperate idler, the loafer, or incompetent, chicken-hearted, slovenly shirker. We have enow of these, God wot, already; but there is work out