duration.  Twice negotiations have failed, and the matter has been laid before the Supreme Court, which has statutory power to fix the price when the parties fail to agree.  It must be remembered that as a rule large holdings of land mean something quite different in New Zealand from anything they signify to the English mind.  In England a great estate is peopled by a more or less numerous tenantry.  In New Zealand it is, as a rule, not peopled at all.  Sheep roam over its grassy leagues, cared for by a manager and a few shepherds.  Natural and proper as this may be on the wilder hills and poorer soils, it is easy to see how unnatural and intolerable it appears in fertile and accessible districts.  In 1891 there were nearly twelve and a half million acres held in freehold.  Of these rather more than seven millions were in the hands of 584 owners, none of whom held less than five thousand acres.  In spite of land-laws, land-tax, and time, out of thirty-four million acres of land occupied under various tenures, twenty-one millions are held in areas of more than five thousand acres.

Much the largest of the estates purchased by the Government came into their hands in an odd way, and not under the Act just described.  The Cheviot property was an excellent example of what the old cheap-land regulations led to.  It was a fine tract of 84,000 acres of land, on which up to 1893 some forty human beings and about 60,000 sheep were to be found.  Hilly but not mountainous, grassy, fertile, and lying against the sea-shore, it was exactly suited for fairly close settlement.  Under the provisions of the land-tax presently to be described, a landowner who thinks the assessors have over-valued his property may call upon the Government to buy it at his own lower valuation.  A difference of L50,000 between the estimate of the trustees who held the Cheviot estate and that of the official valuers caused the former to give the Government of the day the choice between reducing the assessment or buying the estate.  Mr. McKenzie, however, was just the man to pick up the gauntlet thus thrown down.  He had the Cheviot bought, cut up, and opened by roads.  A portion was sold, but most leased; and within a year of purchase a thriving yeomanry, numbering nearly nine hundred souls and owning 74,000 sheep, 1,500 cattle, and 500 horses, were at work in the erstwhile empty tract.  Four prosperous years have since added to their numbers, and the rent they pay more than recoups the Treasury for the interest on its outlay in the purchase and settlement.

In 1886, John Ballance, then Minister of Lands, made a courageous endeavour to place a number of workmen out of employment on the soil in what were known as village settlements.  In various parts of the Colony blocks of Crown land were taken and divided into allotments of from twenty to fifty acres.  These were let to the village settlers on perpetual lease at a rental equal to five per cent. on the prairie value of the land.  Once in a generation there