it was not until the year 1892 that one land act could be said to contain the law on the subject, and to be equally applicable to all New Zealand.  In the meantime the statute-books of 1877, 1878, 1883, 1885 and 1887 bore elaborate evidence of the complexity of the agrarian question, and the importance attached to it.  On it more than on any other difference party divisions were based.  Over it feelings were stirred up which were not merely personal, local, or sectional.  It became, and over an average of years remained, the matter of chief moment in the Colony’s politics.  Finance, liquor reform, labour acts, franchise extension may take first place in this or that session, but the land question, in one or other of its branches, is always second.  The discussions on it roused an enduring interest in Parliament given to no other subject.  The Minister of Lands ranks with the Premier and the Treasurer as one of the leaders in every Cabinet.  Well may he do so.  Many millions of acres and many thousands of tenants are comprised in the Crown leases alone.  Outside these come the constant land sales, the purchases from the Maori tribes, and in recent years the buying back of estates from private owners, and the settlement thereof.  These form most, though not all, of the business of the Minister of Lands, his officers, and the administrative district boards attached to his department.  If there were no land question in New Zealand, there might be no Liberal Party.  It was the transfer of the land from the Provinces to the central Parliament in 1876 which chiefly helped Grey and his lieutenants to get together a democratic following.

[Illustration:  A NEW ZEALAND SETTLER’S HOME

Photo by WINCKLEMAN]

Slowly but surely the undying agrarian controversy passed with the Colony’s progress into new stages.  In the early days we have seen the battle between the “sufficient price” of Gibbon Wakefield and the cheap land of Grey, the good and evil wrought by the former, the wide and lasting mischief brought about by the latter.  By 1876 price had ceased to be the main point at issue.  It was agreed on all hands that town and suburban lands parted with by the Crown should be sold by auction at fairly high upset prices; and that rural agricultural land should be divided into classes—­first, second, and third—­and should not be sold by auction, but applied for by would-be occupants prepared to pay from L2 to 10s. an acre, according to quality.  More and more the land laws of the Colony were altered so as to favour occupation by small farmers, who were not compelled to purchase their land for cash, but permitted to remain State tenants at low rentals, or allowed to buy the freehold by gradual instalments, termed deferred payments.  Even the great pastoral leaseholds were to some extent sub-divided as the leases fell in.  The efforts of the land reformers were for many years devoted to limiting the acreage which any one person could buy or lease, and to ensuring