VICISSITUDES 385 



secondly, that the return from land held in small farms is relatively 

 greater than from lands held in bulk ; in the former case the ground 

 is fully utilised, in the latter it is often not worked to its best 

 advantage. In order to be able to satisfy the land hunger existing 

 in the Dominion, legislation has been enacted which has necessarily 

 affected the interests of those giants of the prime, the original holders, 

 the squatters. Thus menaced, that class has not unnaturally, by pro- 

 crastination and by the law's delay, striven to avert the sacrificial knife 

 from its throat. Consequently, partly on this, and partly by reason 

 of the natural antagonism between the house of "Have" and the house 

 of "Want," a certain hostility has attached itself to all squatters, not 

 as private citizens but as a class. As Meredith says of the sex, the 

 individual has been rolled into the general, and a kick bestowed on the 

 travelling bundle. A squatter in the parlance of a certain set of the 

 community, a bloated squatter included any person who held land 

 in a large way regardless as to whether he was a lease-holder or free- 

 holder, whether the unearned increment accruing to the land occupied 

 fell into his private pouch, into the coffers of the State, or into the 

 bottomless pockets of the happy-go-lucky Maori. It has come about 

 pretty regularly, therefore, that at election times the writer has found 

 himself included in the general denunciation fulminated at the 

 "wealthy squatters" north of Napier, wretches really, as the reader has 

 seen, struggling against bankers, bad climate, bad land, and bad titles. 



It was in an atmosphere thus charged with political electricity that 

 with considerable alarm the writer heard of the appointment of a Royal 

 Commission armed with powers to investigate the tenure of certain 

 native leases Tutira amongst them. As a matter of fact his concern 

 was uncalled for, but at the time he could only recollect that he was 

 a squatter, that his character was in no condition to endure the fierce 

 light that beats upon a squatter's concerns in a court of judicial 

 inquiry ; that he was in possession of too many sheep and of too much 

 land. 



In due time the Commission arrived at Tangoio, and there heard 

 the views of the native owners of Tutira ; it arrived, as became a Royal 

 Commission, in a coach and four. In front skirmished an irregular 

 light horse of landlords. In the wake of the Royal vehicle flowed a 

 stream of buggies, gigs, and dogcarts of every date and description : 

 some brand - new for the occasion, with shining buckles and clean 



2 B 



