the Company are as follows, namely : by residents, about 120,000 acres ; by absentees, about 320,000 acres ; and in whatever way the scheme of re-selection could be carried out, it is certain those proportions could not be improved very materially. It remains to be seen how the scrip would have an immediate tendency to make that improvement. One of the points bearing on this question is the probable value which the scrip will bear : your Committee, therefore, took a great deal of evidence upon it. Some witnesses thought it might maintain a value not far below the rate of its issue : others (and these the majority) that it would fall to a price at least as low as the Company’s scrip, which at Wellington was from the first at a discount of 75 per cent, and even at Nelson (where the Company’s large private estate made it more valuable) was at 50 per cent discount. Your Committee have desired to regard the probable effects of the scheme from both points of view.

Proceeding, first, on the supposition that the scrip would maintain its value in the market at par or some rate not much below, it seems very improbable that the absentees will to any extent re-exchange it for land. It was objected by one of the witnesses that the absentee or his agent would compete at the land sales with the actual colonist for the best pieces of land, and being better able to spare scrip than the colonist to pay cash, would outbid him continually. It appears clear, on the contrary, that if the scrip maintains its value in the market and the absentee can obtain £1 or thereabouts in money for £1 of scrip, it cannot be worth his while to outbid the colonist, who would surely give him a higher price afterwards than he was disposed to bid at the sale ; and in the few cases where the land was really so valuable as to excite the competition, it would be proper that the public should get the benefit of it. On another ground it seems there would not be an inducement to the absentee to outbid the colonist, since his scrip would certainly not be taxed, while the land (when he got it) possibly might. But whether he did so or not the public would gain, and the proportion between absentees and residents would be improved : if the absentee scrip-holder obtained the land a quantity of scrip would be absorbed in the higher price, and there would be so much less absentee scrip to come in afterwards : if the colonist obtained it, the land fund would benefit by his cash payment, and he would increase the proportion of resident to absentee landowners.

Proceeding on the contrary supposition, that instead of maintaining its value at or about par, the scrip should, by being extensively thrown into the market by absentees, fall to a great discount, it is clear that it would be still less worth the absentees’ while to attempt to outbid the real colonist ; or, more properly, that the colonist could always afford to outbid the absentee in proportion to the discount at which he could obtain the scrip. The greater that discount, the more could the colonist afford to bid if there were much competition, and the more capital would he save if there were none ; in the one case the public would save land by the absorption of scrip, in the other the colonist would practically obtain cheap land without the cost of an acre to the public : in both cases, as before, the proportion between resident and absentee landowners would be improved.

Again, in estimating the quantity of land that would probably be required for re-selection, your Committee have only taken into account that which was unavailable from position or inferior soil. But though they are disposed to agree with most of the witnesses that little good land would be thrown up under the simple scheme of re-selection, they think it very probable that under the scheme of scrip many absentees proprietors (and especially those holding more than one section, scattered here and there over the country) will rather take scrip for the whole of their claim including the unselected compensation land, than keep even good sections so scattered and only take scrip for the compensation. This, if at all generally done, would free a quantity of good land already taken up, and place it at the disposal of Government : when the same process as has been above referred to would be repeated, and always with the effect of improving the proportion between resident and absentee landowners.

Independently, however, of the direct benefit to the land fund and the colonist, which would thus take place, whether the scrip maintained its value or fell to a low price, your Committee believe that the scheme will have an indirect influence, at once more extensive, more certain of lessening absenteeism, and more beneficial to this country. If, as has been said, the absentees will not themselves find it worth their while to re-exchange their scrip to any great extent for land, but will be willing to sell it at fair prices, their possession of a large amount of it in England may be made a means of promoting emigration to New Zealand, and of relieving the Company’s settlements from the reproach of being, out of all the colonies of England, with very few exceptions, those where the public land has been the most profusely granted and where the proportion borne by the population to the alienated land is the most unfavourable. Hitherto no intending colonist would buy from absentees a landorder fettered as the Company’s, and so uncertain of being exchangeable for a legal title : and there can be no doubt whatever that these difficulties, common to a body of persons in all parts of the United Kingdom who subscribed £230,000 to the foundation of these settlements, have had an immense effect in discouraging colonists of capital from coming here. It remains to be seen whether the adjustment arising out of the Government’s contracts, may not produce a contrary result. In the first place the mere removal of previous disgust and doubt, and the equitable and immediate settlement of every claim, may of itself be fairly expected to renew, among the same class which produced the pioneers of British civilization in New Zealand, the desire of emigrating hither, which has so many years been suspended. In the second place there has been ample evidence, in the immigration of the last few years, of a growing inclination in a class possessed of small means and able to bring out their families without any cost to the Emigration Fund, to come to this colony ; persons who on their arrival would increase the number of “peasant proprietors,” to whom a very great part of the progress of this colony is undeniably attributable, and whose exertions, as being perhaps those which soonest repay themselves and increase production, it is most desirable to encourage and promote. To such persons few greater inducements to emigration to this colony would be found than that of being able (if some effort were used in assisting them) to purchase from the absentee proprietors, at reasonable prices, Government scrip with which on arrival they could obtain land at the Government auction sales. For it is again to be remembered that while great difficulty exists in the way of redeeming at once the whole of the scrip, none whatever would be found in providing from time to time for the arrival of colonists holding the scrip in small quantities : and that even if it were so presented in large quantities, the public, which really has no sort of inducement