GOLD DUTIES BILL.

Dunstan Times, Issue 755, 6 October 1876, Page 3

GOLD DUTIES BILL.

Mr. PYKE moved that Mr Speaker leave the Ohainn order that the House might go into Committee on this Bill; and in doing so explained that it was agreed, when the second reading‘of the Bill was moved, that the discussion on it and upon the principle involve! in it should be taken on the motion for going into Committee. He would therefore take this somewhat unusual course, hut the one agreed to by the House —namely, to explain the grounds on which ho advocated this measure. It was the more necessary to do so because the aspect of tho question this session was entirely different from that it had assumed on the previous occasions. He did not' pretend to expect or hope, to throw much new light upon the question, after the exhaustive speeches delivered upon the subject of gold fields taxation when the mvtion of the honorable member for Grey Valley was before the House. But he might be allowed to point out that the present proposition was a very different one from that of the honorable gentleman, because, whereas the motion of the honorable gentleman expressed a mere abstract proposition, ho desired by this measure to arrive at a concrete result. Thu House had got rid of one difficulty which was always in the way of a reduction in former years. In former years it was always alleged that Ministers could notaltord to allow this tax to be removed. He called it a tax, although some honorable m°mbers chose to call it a royalty. He would not quarrel about ternis, but world say that at all events it was something which pressed very heavily on the turning community. That argument had no longer any force, bricaluse the Government offered to return the money into the pockets of the community from avhnra if raised, and they went even farther, and said, “ We will subsidize your rates, arid give you L2 for every LI in order to reconcile you to the tax.” That seemed to him a very curious proposition. If tho Treasurer was really in want ot cash—and that was an argument he hid heard very frequently this session -he did not see why the Government should perpetuate a tax which would necessitate the Treasury-paying out an extra sum of money. 1 Therefore, upon economical grounds he asked" the Government to assent to the abolition of this tax, inasmuch as it would remove the necessity of returning from the Treasury fares times as much as it received. The House had been told that this question had never been put to the mining community : hut it was a duty which lie owed to the House, to himself, and to the mining community to say that that was not exactly correct ; because at his last election, and at several meetings during tho last six months following, he brought the matter before the electors—and he might say he represerited a community which, although not exclusively, was almost exclusively a mining community, lie said to them, “ Here is the proposition. If you allow this tax to remain, the Goveiririient will give you three pounds for one to make your roads and bridges. Would you prefer that, or would you sooner have the tax removed ?” And without a disseritierit video throughout tho whole ot thegoldfirilds the minors said, “ No. Take off the tax. It is ruining our industry, repressing our energy, and we infinitely prefer tho substance of an actual good to the intangible shadow of a possible subsidy.” Ha asked tho House to consider -tho question from another point ot view. This was not a question of whether a particular cldss desired to be relieved from a particular tax.

.That would not bo a fair way to put it, although it was the way in which it had often been put. .He took the major proposition, and said it was the first duty of Government to insist upon an equitable adjustment o{ the-burdens of the pooploi This tax was not just, inasmuch ns it was an exceptional one, and one which pressed unduly and unfairly upon a particular portion of Her Majesty’s subjects. The principle laid down in England with reference to,the income tax' Applied to this tax, and that principle in the words of the well-known writer, Leone Levi, was briefly this : “It is tho bounden duty of the Stato not to diminish materially the comforts of the community. The mind which is constantly exposed to the anxieties and dangers of trade, or which labors in close arid abstruse researches, arid the brawny arms which bear tho burden of daily occupation and hard toil, treed the support of comfortable food and raiment. To deprive a ’ttian; 'or even to stint him of such, is to destroy his ability tiftd power for work, arid so to paValyse trie resources of the community.” That was exactly what this duty did ' and he would show that Ouch was the case. It must be remembered that the miners were in this position : that upon one special industry four special taxes were levied. In the first place, before a man dared to occupy a piece of ground to seek for gold, he must pay LI per annum for a miner’s right. As soon as he had paid that, he must pay further fees for registering his claim, tor water licenses, and foreverything that assisted him in his industry. That" was tax No. 2. No. 3 tax was this duty upon gold; and then they had No. 4, which the House had objected to, but which, by the 'process of legislation in another place, had been imposed upon the mining corrimunity, and,that was-' a tax upon raining p-operty. There were therefore fourffiiffererit taxes upon mining property, and he contended that a duty which press- ; ed so ineqitably upon ono portion of the community was exceptional and' special. He repeated that, because the expression had been before objected to iu tho House. The Assembly had been.giving bonuses for years upon different industries—upon iron, upon coal, upon various other mi icrals, upon woollen manufactures, and even upon whiskey. He did not object to those bonuses, nor say that it was a had principle, but what could be said of a country that offered a bonus for the discovery of minerals and pfcfan exceptional tax upon an industry which had raised this colony from a comparatively insignificant condition into the position of one of the the first colonies in the British Empire? He heard some honorable members laugh, but he looked round the House and saw very many honorable members who never would have been heard of—it it had not been for tho discovery of gold. Some persons said it was provincial institutions which had raised New Zealand into her prosperous position, while, on the other hand, the Government said it was the Public Works and Immigration ’policy ; hut be could tell them that the colony would never have been so prosperous, and the public works would not have been carried out for the next century, had it not been for the discovery of gold. Ho would ask the House to consider this : Had the discovery of gold been a curse or a blessing ? Had its effect been beneficient or maleficient? I.et them turn to California, New South Wales, Victoiia, or this country-, and in every case they would find that wherever gold had been discovered it had been the forerunner of a large population, of a state of prosperity, and in fact had been an accession to tbe welfare of tbe world at large. He had been told in the House that wjierever miners went they at once required roads and bridges, and money expended on other works. The honorable member for the Thames (Mr Rowe) said so ; hut he would ask the hone-able member what was the Thames county before gold was discovered ? The Thames was a wilderness. What was the West Coast before gold was discovered ? It was a wilderness, Roads rind bridges were not wanted there because there was nobody to use them. What was the interior of Utago before gold was discovered, but a wilderness, having nothing but a few ■scrubby sheep travelling about the ranges, with one or two shepherds behind them? Nobody ever heard of the Lake-countiy until the miners went there in search of gold, and developed the resources of the country. He knew also what the interior of Victoria was before gold was discovered, and it was useless for honorable -members to come to the House and decry the industry that had so largely contributed to make New Zealand what it was. They had been told of the ravages the miners committed on the land, and of the land they destroyed; but what were the few acres of land the miners used in comparison with the vast extent of country which they caused to bo populated ? A person might travel for fifty or sixty miles on the goldfields of Otago and not see a sign Of digging, for the extent of country actually occupied by the diggings was very small indeed, besides, the damage done was riot permanent. The elements never failed to perform their duty, arid to repair the ravages of man. The wind blew and the rain fell, and in a few years the ground where tho miners had wrought fe’l again into its old shape. If he -wanted a fine property, ho would not wish anything better than some of the old workcd-cut fiats or gullies in Otago. He knew of no better property in tho province. Coming hack to the question, ho would show how this duty affected the mining industry, for that was tho real point at issue. Ho hoped the remarks lie was about to make would be received with intelligent discrimination. He would point out that tho man who paid the least duty felt it the most; for. to the inincr who obtained large quantities of grill the duty was a mere trifle, and the more lie paid tho bette*- he was satisfied. But to the man who merely gleaned a living upon the goldfields tho payment of tho duty was of very material importance,' and ho could prove (continued on the fourth yingc.)

' that by what he might term the loaf-of-argument. The man who had a 'whole loaf could -very well afford to part 'with a slice ; but the -man who had only a • slice • ceuld not tifford to give away a crumb. He ■did not wish to raise the cry of “ the'poor miner”—a cry ho never did l raise—but he felt it his duty to tell the House that ‘there were hundreds of miners in Otago who did not earn on the average'*3oa a week, and many of them had to support families out •of that. He might be asked, Why did they not leave gold mining ? Why did they continue at work ? The answer was that they had a certain amount of property invested, for most of them were sluicers, and as they -could not dispose of their interests they had to continue working and thus perpetuated the troubles they suffered. He .would draw attention to the fact that a warden had reported that there were no young miners ; no young men entered upon the speculation of gold mining. All who were mining had been engaged in it for years. He knew that where wages were freely paid a different state of things existed, but those who received wages were not miners proper. They were simply laboring men working as miners. At present the total number of miners in the colony as given in the Goldfields report on the table of the House was 16,329; and of these only 12,445 were Europeans. 'Now/what revenue'did this small proportion of the population pay? That was the point. The gold' duty did not represent it, for it only represented one-half of the actual revenue derived from the mining community. Last year the total sum was L 82,011, which, taking into consideration, was about L 5 of special taxation per year. The gold obtained in the year was 335,322 ■ounces, and the total taxation was actually in excess of 4s 6d per ounce. Under these • circumstances, was he not justified in coming down to the House and asking that they ■should permit a reduction of the duty? That was wished by those who were mostly interested, as was proved by the fact that the Provincial Council of Otago' absolutely passed an Ordinance reducing the gold duty to Is an ounce : that is to say, they made a ■ rebate of it. But' 'that Ordinance, having been kept back to the last possible day—he ■ doubted whether its disallowance by the Governor was not in contravention of the Constitution—was disallowed, and the will of the province, which alone had anything to say to the question of revenue, was ignored. Therefore there could be no doubt as to the view of those intrusted to legislate upon the subject. He knew the honorable member for the Thames (Mr Eowe) had very peculiar views upon the subject, and had asserted that the borough of Thames could not exist without mining taxation, both in the shape of gold duties, and also in the shape of taxation upon property. Mr ROWE. I never said so, Mr PYK.E had understood the honorable member to say so. T The amount of duty paid at'the Thames was L 5,000 or L 6,000 a , year, and he was perfectly willing, and the rest of the goldfields in New Zealand would be satisfied, to allow that an amount equal to that which would be lost by the Thames, in consequence of the'proposed reduction, should be taken out of the general goldfields revenue, and handed over to the people of the Thames, rather than there should I he any difference of •opinion 'on this subject. He would tell the Government that the levying of this duty had a most detrimental effect upon the development of the mining interest, and prevented the investment of capital. The amount of duty, 2s. per ounce, represented, in many cases, entirely the difference between profit and loss, and more especially was that the fact in regard to quartz lodes. The amount of gold raised per ton in no way ■ represented the value of the lode, for that depended upon other circumstances. The •lode might be two inches wide or six feet; the gold might run through the whole width or be confined to one side of it, or to the casing. . . . The capital invested on the goldfields was not insignificant, for, taking the totals from the Goldfields Secretary’s report of last year, 'he found that in round numbers the capital invested in water races was one million, and in machinery half a million sterling. I He might, he thought, state that an industry in which so much capital was invested ought not to be subjected to special taxation, and it was quite time it should be freed from it. He promised not to detain the House long, and he did not intend to do so ; but there was one point he was bound to refer 4g. New Zealand, owing to the operation of this tax, was placed upon very unfavorable terms by comparison with other gold-producing countries. In New South Wales the duty was la. per ounce ; in Victoria it had been abolished since 1867, and in Queensland it had been abolished since 1874. In Victoria “ miners” were exempted from taxation by the Local Government Act. In California there was not, and never had been, any duty whatsoever ; and the only tax the miners paid was a levy, of ten dollars per annum. . .

Now,-in this colony there was no inspection, and noecientificerrangement. There was no attempt whatever to give the miners the slightest assistance from the scientific authorities which they paid so dearly forTherefore the State had no right to put any ■cheek upon the mining enterprise of the country by the imposition of special taxation. He would now explain the position he had taken in regard to this matter, and he would sustain that position by reading an extract from a letter which he held in his hand. The platform from which he spoke on behalf of the miners was this:: They claimed to be placed in the same position—neither hotter nor worse—as all other classes of the community. They asked for •no special privileges, but they demanded to he released from all special'taxation. The miners had been frequently taunted in the House with having been invested with electoral rights by virtue of their miners’ rights. But they did not want those special rights, because most of them were already on the electoral roll. They were settled houso•halders, and hot wanderers, as in days o'

eld. The sooner the right of voting un<|«r the miner's right was taken Jbet-, ter it would be for the miner and the community at large.' The miners wanted no privilege. ‘They said, “We are willing to pay our share to the general purse to meet the- neoessities of the State,'arid we ask nothing more from the ; State than is granted to other inhabitants of ; the Colony.” Why should there be ouy difference''made between one class and another? ! That was what he wanted to know. The letter from which he was about to'quota was' from the President of the Central Mining Association of Otago, and was addressed to the Premier at Wellington ; and it was contained in one of the papers laid on the table of the House, [Extract read.] He ventured to say that ho spoke the feelings of the miners when, he stated that he asked for no special rights. He would say, that whether honorable members liked it or not—and he only had to look round the House and point to the empty benches to show how objectionable the subject was to honorable members. If the question under consideration was some fiction of constitutional law those benches would be crowded, but when the matter took the shape of something which was of practical advantage to a large portion of tho community the benches were empty. He did not care what Government occupied the Ministerial benches, he would say to them and to the House that the demand for justice which he was now making would never cease to be heard in that Chamber until justice had been obtained, and until the miner was placed in the same position as any other member of the community.