68 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Jury, 1901, 
any distance away from the vicinity of towns. This Land Act was passed by tha 
Mackenzie Ministry, of which my father was a member, hence the interest I took in 
the effect of its workings. The originators of the Act were men who understood tha 
country, but they were not well versed in human nature, for they marred their work 
by allowing residence by bailiff, giving openings to the unscrupulous for evasion and 
fraud, and putting temptation in the way of those who were ambitious for the aggrega- 
tion of large estates. Experience has proven that allowing the public promiscuously 
to take up land, without residence of themselves personally, causes people to selech 
for the purpose of speculation and the locking up of land for no better purpose than 
grazing; that results in encouraging another class of squatter who makes no bettes 
use of the land than the original leaseholder—a manifest injustice to the vested rights 
of the pioneer. In fact, the encouragement of speculators of this class creates ay, 
immensity of wrongdoing, for, besides monopolising the land, it causes a laxity of 
morals among the people who take it up. 
It is only right that squatters should give way to bond jfide settlers, but not to 
men who make no better use of the land than they do themselves. 
The spirit of the 1869 Act was good, but the administration was lax, and the Bill. 
faulty in detail, the results being an immensity of good to the colony through the 
homestead clauses, and an immensity of evil through the allowance of residence by 
bailiff, encouraging dummying and the aggregation of large estates that now stand 
in the way of bond fide settlement. 
This 1869 Land Act, with numerous amendments, remained in force till Dutton’s 
Act was passed in 1884. In this Dutton made a new departure, opening up land to 
selectors under the title of grazing farms as leaseholders instead of freeholders, 
This Act had many good points as well as great faults: first and foremost, the change 
was too sudden in upsetting the customary course of business; secondly, a system 
of bailiffing was established that at once encouraged settlement other than bond fide, 
and now we are met face to face with a class of speculators who make use of their 
relations and friends to select grazing farms in the best localities, aggregating together 
a number of 20,000 acres that they turn to no better use than the former lessees who: 
held the country as part of their run. 
This evil ot dummying large areas for speculation purposes establishes a different 
system of sqzatting, without increasing the production or population, manifestly unfair 
to the runholder, and injuring the advancement of the colony by locking up so much land 
from th. “2gitimate settler who desires to make a home for himself and family. 
The question now that appeals to our mind is how to remedy these evils. There is. 
no other panacea but bond jide homestead settlement in swfliciently large areas, 
regulated after due consideration of climatic conditions and transit facilities to 
markets. 
In the far West I would recommend areas up to 50,000 acres, and on the coast, 
where agriculture is profitable, from 1,280 to as low as 80 acres on good soil, areas: 
increasing as distance from the coast increased and rainfall decreased. During the 
first few years of settlement rental should be as light as possible, taxation increasing 
as the settler prospered. Experience has proved that it takes time and money to 
form a home, and returns do not flow in till improvements are made and the home 
thoroughly established; therefore the more reason for the State to be lenient with 
the settler in his first years of settlement. 
Talking of homestead settlement, some people might say that it is hard on the 
shopkeeper not to be able to take up land, and also hard on the man who has not 
enough money to support himself on the selection till returns come in. All i can say 
is that it is better for the shopkeeper not to waste money on the land till he is in a 
position to live onit, and for the poorer man it is better that he should work on wages 
till he had laid by enough to give him a good start sufficient to stock the selection and. 
keep him till returns from the land are due, Doubtless in certain cases other systems 
of parting with the land are necessary, but the power of selling or leasing land to any 
but bond fide homestead settlers should be seldom exercised, for it seems like parting’ 
with the people’s moral rights in their patrimony without a proper equivalent—that 
is, in other words, wasting the capital of the State. The promiscuous sale of land, 
too, generates the evil of extravagance and greed among our legislators and their 
hangers-on. 
The principles enunciated in Dutton’s Act were good, and the system of leasing a 
good commercial way of settlement for the State, but the administration of the Act 
has been bad; consequently Dutton’s dreams have been far from realised. One great. 
evil that need never have taken place has been delay in confirming applications. It 
is not right that after a man has paid his money, and his application Bae accepted, 
that any delay of lengthened character should occur before he took possession, and in 
