for emigration, education and religion). In support it was contended that the “sufficient price” would ensure the effective occupation of all land sold, and protect the community from purchases by land jobbers or speculators, who might otherwise block settlement till they could obtain a profit from unearned increment. The effect of the dear land system would thus be to conserve the national estate for bona fide settlement later on. The cheap land party appealed to the working classes. They claimed that their object was to enable the working man to acquire his own farm, and that those who advocated high prices did so to prevent the workers from settling on the land, and to maintain the supply of labour they required. There was at the time a great scarcity of labour in Christchurch, and the importation of Chinese had been publicly urged.
Time supplied the answer. It was under Sir George Grey’s land regulations that the purchase of Cheviot and other large estates at 10/- per acre, some of them paid for with Government Scrip, bought at a discount, became possible.
Meanwhile, at the election of Superintendent, the cry was somehow raised that cheap land meant cheap bread, so that big and little loaf figured in the campaign much as they did many years afterwards in Chamberlain’s fight for Tariff Reform. There were three candidates for the Superintendency: Mr. J. E. FitzGerald and Mr. Henry J. Tancred, who split the vote of the dear land party, and Colonel Campbell, a protégé of Sir George Grey’s, who held the office of Land Commissioner, as the champion of cheap land. Mr. FitzGerald was elected, the poll (Wednesday, July 20, 1853) resulting as follows :— FitzGerald, 185; Colonel Campbell, 94: Tancred, 89.
Early in June, the accounts of the Canterbury Association, made up to November 13, 1852, which had been warmly criticised in the London “Times,” were published in the colony. These showed a deficiency on emigration
