POLITICAL ASSOCIATION.

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 94, 6 February 1892, Page 2

POLITICAL ASSOCIATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir — I being a farmer and asked to join the Political Association and refusing to do so, would like to state in the Star my reasons for declining the honour. The dual vote, intended as a large bribe to those who haye " a stake iv the colony" for joining the Association, is, in my opinion, utterly wrong, and based on a mistaken idea of the rights of a class. On this claimed ground of right all interested in the liquor traffic, if not all who drink intoxicants, should claim, in order to conserve their interests, two votes against teetotallers, one at local licensing elections ; and a Government who granted it in one case could not consistently refuse it in the other. A stake, as I understand it, is a gambling term t and if one plays fora stake it follows that his opponent has a stake to lose. In this case it is the landless laborer I am asked to play against, my stake being my farm, his— rhis axe, spade, or pick. If I- win (and how mean not to say unjust of me to demand two chances of winning to his one) I. leave him less able to have, or work, his useful tool. If he wins and the result is similar to last elections, I lose nothing. His. winning increases the value of my farm by. diminishing my taxation j and, by . the way, it is nonsense, at present, to talk of the single tax overtaking lahdowners r and if it did it would mean, repudiation of all our liabilities to money-lenders, which might be no small gain to us. But, I opine that no one will gain a true notion of fair play between man and master' till he drops the gambling^ figure and, selepta a more moral, or Christian, idealf Indeed, , if there is danger ofland -owners obtaining a dual vote, I beg to suggest that Captains of Labour buy blocks of land m all districts and give, or slell, acre /allotments to all landless electors, and count on my few soyereigns of help for the purpose of fighting " Diabolians " with their own weapons. We farmers would be ;dopking our landless sons of their, political manhood in giving a dual vote to land owners. The charge brought against the Government of unjust taxation is exceedingly flimsy, I might say dishonest coming from 6onie quarters, it being an ; attempt on the part of the Government to equalise taxation on various incomes. The fact that more land is taken up on perpetual lease than on other systems speaks for itself ; people see that money in hand is of more value to them than if buried in land, such being the case now it will probably continue to be so; and the lordly imagination of land being one's own soon dies in any one who pays rates, taxes, and mortgagees dues on it. I am, &c., Farmer. Makino, February 5.