SIR F. D. BELL ON FUTURE TAXATION.

Evening Star, Issue 3168, 16 April 1873, Page 2

SIR F. D. BELL ON FUTURE TAXATION.

[By Telegraph.]

In addressing his constituents at Invercar* cargili on Monday night, Sir F. Dillon Bell spoke on the above subject as follows ; After stating that the Colony would be involved in borrowing two millions more to complete the lines now' authorised, the ink* rest on the borrowed money would be L 700,000, and the revenue could not be made more than L 1,500,000, he went on to say that Mr Stafford and Mr Vogel had warned the [people that the taxation would have to be raised ; and in order that they should be prepared for it, it was necessary to deal with the question as to how the additional taxation should be imposed. There were three'great classes iptp which the taxable portion of the community was divided —first, the wage.-carning class, who depended upon their labor, who were reached by taxation imposed on the commodities which they consumed, in the shape of Customs duties ; the next class was that which lived on incomes derived from property, which in England was reached by direct taxation in the shape of a property tax ; and the third class was that which was possessed of a fluctuating income, as professional men, merchants, or squatters, whose incomes were derived from the fruits of labor and of capital, who were reached in England through an income tax. These classes all existed here. Applying for a moment, as all who were acquainted with the principles of taxation w r ould readily do, these views to the future taxation—bearing in mind that the Customs revenue could not be raised so as to increase the contribution of the wage-earn-ing class (and that class was already sufficiently taxed)—the resort to a property and income tax was a necessary in r ereuce. In regard to that classification of tax; ayers : he himself,“for U}stance.'‘’typployed ,-t great deal of labor, and lived on his own land, 'thfe amount he contributed to the public revenue was, comparatively speaking, nothin* • because he was not, to any great extent, a consumer, individually, of those commodities on which taxes were imposed. He fully anticipated, therefore, that before very long they would have both a property and income tax which would reach not only the laboring classes, but merchants, squatters, and others who did not pay their proportionate share. For his own part, he said, let it come ; the country would yet make great strides in prosperity. A capitalist in England told him that, when he saw New a territory as big as England and Ireland, and a population about the same as Birmingham, he felt safe in lending money to that country, because that state of things would not last. He also had confidence in the future of the country, but they ought to set their faces against the principle of paying the interest of loans out of the loans themselves. Interest should be paid from yearly revenue, so as £ot to gq into debt for borrowed money ; there had been no mistake in finance and m politics so desperate as that of paying interest out of capital. It was said, indeed, that interest should be charged upon the capital till the works became reproductive ; but on the other hand money had been raised by taxation in the shape of stamp duties to pay that very interest ; and then, session by session, the House had proceeded to cancel that provision find pay the interest out of the loans themselves. ‘Last session, contrary to everything that had been said by either Government, at the last moment LI 20,000 was voted to pay the interest of loans already incurred. That system must soon come to an end.