Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/94

 ing members to Parliament pledged to break up the homes of the pioneers, and it is very evident that they were little disturbed by scruples. Whatever scruples they may have possessed on arrival were thrown away when they repudiated their own liability to refund the balance of the passage money that brought them out.

There is plenty of land in New Zealand now in the same condition as that which was brought into cultivation by the pioneers (to say nothing of the native lands requiring settlement), but, the truth is, the assisted settler had neither the courage nor the energy to carve out his own career. His cupidity and want of principle showed him how much easier it was to grab from those who had been energetic enough to overcome great difficulties, and confiding enough to think that their efforts were for the benefit of their own families. The early settlers then conquered Nature, not to make homes for themselves, but for the feeble-kneed parasites who, in the near future, were to overwhelm them. Would that some power of divination had lifted the veil from them in time to organise some protection.

The land laws, as at present constituted,