RETBOSPECTIVE LEGISLATION.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 7, 3 October 1907, Page 6

RETBOSPECTIVE LEGISLATION.

A dangerous and very noxious principle was laid down by the Premier during Tuesday's discussion of the Land and Income Assessment Bill, a great deal of pertinent discussion took place upon the subject, the flagrant injustice of the principle was heavily stressed by speakers on both sides of the House —and ultimately the majority at the Premier's back affirmed the principle , with that light-hearted carelessness of large issues which has-vitiated so much of the legislation of recent years. Moved by anxiety to circumvent evasion of the graduated land tax, the Government introduced into its complex Bill a provision that " no sale of land shall be effective so as to exempt the seller from liability in respect of graduated land tax" unless certain conditions are complied with, amongst thefce being a cash-down payment by the purchaser of a certain considerable percentage of the purchase-money. As a restriction upon future ■ landtransfers, this provision is a most vicious one, not only in respect of the serious difficulties which it will place in the way of small men who desire to take up land, lnit in respect also of its direct violation of the liberty of private trade and exchange. We have been treated to so many invasions of private rights by modern Liberalism, however, that upon this point we need say no more than that Liberalism seems as far as.ever from escaping- from the quagmire of injustice into which it has been driven by the' doctrinaires who desire an instant,solution of insoluble problems. Bad as the proposal may be iu its bearing on future hind-dealing, its viciousness sinks into insignificance beside the decision to apply it to past dealings in land. All retrospective legislation, and especially retrospective legislation of a penal character, is prima facie improper and unjust. In the present instance the injustice, is peculiarly glaring. A landowner who within the past five years has disposed of blocks of land on mortgage to settlers who have only been able to pay a small deposit will find himself liable to graduated tax on the land which he no longer owns. It is nothing that, he cannot revoke his bargain, it is nothing that lie trusted his fortune to what justice had been left in the.land laws of that day. He is to be treated as one who cunningly and wickedly exercised his wits to evade a law that was not then in existence. The Premier, it is true, expressed dislike for retrospective legislation, but salved his feelings by considering the inevitableness of exceptions to all general dislikes. The present case, he said, was an " exception," and to support that view we cannot find that'he advanced any good argument, or any argument at all, indeed, except that- /' it was not fair that a person who would be affected to-morrow should know that his neighbour a few da'ys.before had contrived, to escape." Surely the Premier cannot forget that the very safety of society depends upon the rejection of any such consideration in passing- penal laws. We do not know which most to wonder at—the clumsiness that cannot check one class's " evasion " of a liability except by imposing a quite arbitrary restriction upon another class's freedom of purchase, the recklessness which establishes the principle of making penal legislation retrospective, or the political extravagances of a party that, sees. nothing extraordinary in helping on that clumsiness and recklessness, with an utter disregard of nil the canons of equity and justice.