The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3039, 23 March 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1881.

Correspondence in support of the existing property tax, and leading articles in favor of an income tax, have for some weeks been the feature of our morning contemporary. It is fair to state that the correspondence has had much the best of the argument. Major Atkinson, in his addresses to the electors at Patea the other day, quoting from Adam Smith, said, the " points to be considered in taxing were that every subject thould contribute towards the support of government in proportion to his means; secondly, that every taxpayer should pay his quota in the best way and at the most convenient time to himself; thirdly, tbat every tax should be certain and unarbitrary, and that each man should know how much he had to pay ; and fourthly, that the taxation should take as little as possible out of the pockets of the people." Practically all these rules are impossible of attainment by any tax which can be deviled. The income tax certainly will not secure those ends. And then comes the question which tax goes nearest to the result. Taxes must be levied to catch different classes ia

different ways, and Major Atkinson claimed that the property tax possessed tbat merit—that it saught classes which could not be otherwise reached, while that class which received the benefit of exemption was araply taxed by the Custom?. The Crovernment bad to choose between an income tax and a property tax, and they rejected the former because they believed that already as large an income tax was practically being levied through the Customs in New Zealand as was being levied in any other country in the world. Political economists showed that it was unadvisable to tax income because it contracted expenditure. For that and other reasons it did not seem desirable to the Government to levy an income tax. The condition of the country demanded increased taxation, at a time too when a commercial depression of unprecedented severity hung over the whole colony. We have not wholly emerged from that depression yet, for, as Major Atkinson pointed out, though the Customs tariff has been raised, the revenue has not benefited. The Colonial Treasurer thought that this did not signify a decreased spending power, but was due to the practice of rigid economy, the need of which had been instilled in the minds ot all classes by the sharp lessons taught by tbe experience of hard times. We cannot altogether agree with him in this idea. The insolvency court has driven many a firm from the import trade which in the past was inflated by an exaggerated notion of the spending power of tbe people. If a truer knowledge of the requirements of trade can be termed economy then Major Atkinson is right. But we bold to tbe opinion that the decreased spending power of the colony is the real cause of the Customs revenue remaining stationary, though the tariff has been increased. This being the case, to have imposed a tax upon precarious incomes already reduced by reason of the times would have been most unjust. As the late Mr Shiel said, in his speech in Parliament on the Income Tax, what can be more unjust than to lay the same tax upon the intellect of one man and upon the acres of another. Look at the proprietor of great territorial possessions, encompassed with every advantage by which existent can be cheered, and life can be prolonged, in the daily enjoyment of the most htalthful exercise, secure of the permanent retention of his estates. Turn from him to the professional man who is engaged from morning till night, or from night till the break of day, in the exhausting occupations from which his precarious subsistence is derived ; mark not only the toil, the incessant toil which it is his destiny to suffer, but the wear and tear of the feelings, and of the faculities which he must needs undergo, the despondency, the faintne9s of heart which at the approach of the slightest ailment must come upon him, the sense of insecurity by which he must perpetually be haunted, the apprehension, the consuming solicitude that must beset him, lest by the gradual decay of his faculties, or the sudden loss of health, he may be deprived of the means of earning his livelihood, and those who areiuestiraably dearer to him than himself, may be reduced to destitution. " Look, I say, at these two men, of whom I have presented to jou no exaggerated delineation, and then do you—you, who ate yourselves the inheritors of large possessions—you, who are born to affluence—you, who have never known a care of to-morrow— you who ' live at home at ease,' and know so little of dangers and the storms of adversity—do you, I Bay, declare whether it be just, whether it be fair, whether it be humane, that upon both these men, and in the 9ame proportion, the same impost should be inflicted. Shall we levy the same contribution on a man with £10,000 a-year, and upon officers in the army and navy, poor clergymen who endeavor to educate their children as the children of gentlemen should be brought up, widows with miserable jointures, tradesmen, artisans, small retailers who eke out a subsistence from the petty business to which, for sixteen or seventeen hours out of the four-and-twenty, they are devoted ? Is it right to tax them as you do the great patricians of the land, and to force them to discover upon oath what perhaps it most deeply concerns their just and legitimate pride tbat they should conceal ? What can be more fearful, more humiliating, then to make a confession of adversity—to let a set of heartless functionaries into the secrets of calamity, and to lay misfortune bare?"