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 memorable phrase, announced that his back was to the door of the leasehold. He committed himself to the “Ballance Policy,” and denounced the proposal to give the Crown tenants the right to purchase the freehold at the original valuation as absolutely immoral. “I see no reason whatever,” he said, “why these tenants should be given a million of money belonging to the colony, as that will be the outcome of the proposal if it is adopted.”

The disturbance raised by those who posed as the Crown tenants’ friends drew attention to the position of the holders of leases-in-perpetuity, and the colony began to consider whether it had been acting fairly to itself in granting those leases at all. It argued that a vast amount of unearned increment which ought to belong to the State was going past it, and that there was springing up, to a great extent, the very condition of things that Sir John McKenzie had racked his brains to guard against.

The lease-in-perpetuity has an interesting history. The Ballance Government found that it could not maintain its proposal that no more Crown lands should be sold. Sir John McKenzie was convinced in his own mind that the time had come when the State should sell no more of the land that remained to it. He was strongly opposed to giving anyone the right to purchase the freehold of Crown lands. He did not want to have a freehold clause inserted in any Land Bill of which he was the author, or which he had to administer. He had a reputation for possessing an obstinate and uncompromising temper, which would bow to no other man’s opinion. It is a reputation that he never earned, and did not deserve. He repeatedly gave way to other views, against his best judgment. He did so in this case. Recognising that there were many people in the colony who had not come to his way of thinking, and having a deep sense of the responsibility that rested upon him as a Minister, he felt that he had no right to go further than public opinion could go with him. There was no doubt in his mind that those who said that no more Crown lands should be sold were right; but he respected the opinions of others, whom he credited with equal sincerity, and who