LATER DEVELOPMENTS 307 



ment of New Zealand made itself the organ of this 

 belief and desire, and through a succession of years it 

 went on buying back, or forcibly resuming, large landed 

 estates. Its example has been imitated by the Austra- 

 lian Governments. The Labour Government of the 

 Commonwealth has imposed a land-tax with the object 

 of breaking up the big estates, and in 1910 the Labour 

 ministry of New South Wales decided that no more 

 public lands should be sold, but all of them leased. 

 Let the process of resumption be completed, and in all 

 of the Australasian States the whole of the land will 

 once more become the property of the State. The last 

 phase of the evolution of landed property in Australia 

 will then, though on a higher plane, repeat the earliest. 



