Land Policy of the Wellington Provincial Government: Its Aims and Its Working-Out with Particular Reference to the Wairarapa

Abstract

During a debate in the Wellington Provincial Council in 1857, Joseph Masters, Member for the Wairarapa, charged the Provincial Government with having implemented "class-legislation" in matters affecting the disposal of the Province's waste-lands Speech in Provincial Council, 7/1/57, quoted in "Spectator", 14/1/57. Masters was only one of many, both in and out of the Council, who claimed that the trend of provincial land policy unduly favoured runholding interests at the expense of small intending freeholders. This thesis sets out to examine the evidence on which this charge rested. The scope of the enquiry will involve an analysis of the Provincial Government's own land legislation as well as an examination of the way in which that legislation, along with regulations already in force, was carried into effect. In his search for evidence to throw light on the working-out of land policy, the writer has drawn on material relating mainly to the Wairarapa and to a lesser extent the neighbouring East Coast district where the timing of large-scale land purchases chanced to coincide with the inauguration of the Wellington Provincial Government. Any attempt to analyse the record of the Provincial Government in land matters must take into account the policy pursued by its predecessor, the Government of New Munster whose attitude towards the occupation of unpurchased land had a marked effect on the course of future policy. The way in which the land policy of the New Munster Government influenced the course of subsequent events will be discussed in the opening chapter.