which
they have generated, makes them disinclined to employ labour in
the improvement of their lands. As to the Government's land
policy, while it is admitted that small settlers are desirable, it is
not admitted that large properties are necessarily a curse. What
is resented more fiercely than anything else is the fact that they
are liable to have their own properties appropriated at the
arbitrary will of the Minister of lands, and though the Government
promises to work the law reasonably, neither this nor any other of
their declarations is regarded with confidence. It is asserted that
the Government is flooding the country with incompetent settlers,
who imagine that anyone can get a living out of the land; that the
resumed properties have been purchased and cut up in such a way
that a cry for a reduction of rents will soon become inevitable, and
that the Cheap Money Scheme has created a class of debtors,
who, in conceivable circumstances, might be able to apply
effectual political pressure for the reduction of their interest. In
point of fact they do not share the Progressist idea, that much can
be done by legislation to ameliorate the condition of the masses of
the population, nor do they see that in a country like New Zealand,
where labour is dear, food cheap, and the climate mild and
equable, their condition need necessarily be so deplorable. They
still cherish the old theories of individualism. The humanitarian
ideals of Mr. Reeves, not being idealists, they regard with little
interest. What they see is the Government of their Colony, which
they had been accustomed to control, in the hands of men whose
characters they despise or detest, and the House of Representatives,
which was once the most dignified and distinguished
assembly in the Colonies, now become (in their circle at any rate)
a byword of reproach--full of men who vote themselves for a three
months' session salaries which many of them would be unable to
earn in any other walk of life."

Despite the Socialistic tendency of the Acts thus denounced, it must
not be thought that there is any strong party of deliberate State
Socialists in the Colony at all corresponding to the following of
Bebel and Liebknecht in Germany, or even the Independent Labour Party
in England. There is not. The reforms and experiments which show
themselves so many in the later chapters of the story of New Zealand
have in