Every month that this measure is delayed it is made
more difficult and therefore should not be postponed at all. The buyers
of the 1,200 town acres would feel much disappointment at the measure,
as the market would be spoiled for the sale of their building lots, but
they would be rightly served for asking a monopoly price to respectable
new-comers, who ought to be enabled to obtain a town allotment for a
trifle of the Government.
In New South Wales they are sold by auction as applied for, and put up
at 20_s._ each, at which price they are generally knocked down; but with
a view to prevent any monopolizer buying them up, to the injury of the
_bona fide_ settler, every purchaser must sign a bond to the Government
in a penalty of L20, that he will build a house on the allotment, of a
certain value, within three years, or otherwise the land reverts
absolutely to the Crown, and the penalty is enforced too. This is as it
should be, and the evil working of the old system ought to have been
forseen, but at South Australia the Commissioners and Survey Department
disdained to copy anything from such a colony as Sydney and made the old
saying good about advice, that those who want it most like it least.
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