sort of way.

"But you mustn't own a freehold, and you mustn't have a run,
And you mustn't be a kinsman of a squatter owning one;

"But must build a habitation and contentedly reside,
And must satisfy the Land Board that you pass the night inside.

"For if any rash selector on his section isn't found
He is straightway doomed to forfeit all his title to the ground."]

The political battles over the land laws of New Zealand during
the sixteen years since 1882 have not, however, centred round the
limitation of the right of purchase, or insistence on improvements,
so much as round the respective advantages of freehold and perpetual
leasehold, and round the compulsory repurchase of private land for
settlement. Roughly speaking, the political party which has taken the
name of Liberal has urged on the adoption of the perpetual lease as
the main or sole tenure under which State lands should in the future
be acquired. As a rule the party which the Liberals call Conservative
has advocated that would-be settlers should be allowed to choose their
tenure for themselves, and to be leaseholders or freeholders as they
please. Then there have arisen, too, important questions affecting the
perpetual lease itself. Should the perpetual leaseholders retain the
right of converting at any time their leasehold into a freehold by
paying down the cash value of their farm, or should the State always
retain the fee simple? Next, if the State should retain this, ought
there to be periodical revisions of the rent, so as to reserve the
unearned increment for the public? Fierce have been the debates and
curious the compromises arrived at concerning these debatable points.
The broad result has been that the sale of the freehold of Crown
lands, though not entirely prohibited, has been much discouraged, and
that the usual tenure given now is a lease for 999 years at a rent
of four per cent. on the prairie value of the land at the time of
leasing. As this tenure virtually hands over the unearned increment to
the lessee, it is regarded by the advanced land reformers with mixed
feelings. From their point of view, however, it has the advantage of
enabling men with small capital to take up land without expending
their money in a cash purchase. Inasmuch, too, as transfers of a lease
can only be made with the assent of the State Land Board for the
district--which assent will only be given in case the transfer is to a
_bona fide_ occupier not