SINGLE TAX.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 48, 24 August 1895, Page 2

SINGLE TAX.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR. Sir, — I note the letter of Hon. Secretary (Mr King) of the Ground Rent Revenue League, Auckland. When in a former letter I said that the theories of Mr Henry George had been threshed out in the United States of America I was certainly then under that impression, for Mr Henry George fonght the election for the mayoralty of New York, in 1866, ou the Single Tax platform, and he and his principles were overwhelmingly beaten by Major Hewett; and, moreover, I thought he had been utterly extinguished -when the Union Labor Party passed the following resolution : — " That we consider the course pursued by Henry George, as a member of the Union Labor Party, as unmanly, void of every principle of a gentleman ; his action that of a traitor ; and, not desiring his fellowship any longer, we declare him expelled from this organization." It appears, however, that matters are much more serions than I thought, and that these dangerous Socialistic doctrines are spreading rapidly. I can quite understand a weak-miuded man giving Henry George £'6000 to promulgate his views, as we know there were many foolish people who advanced large^siims of money to tiiat archimposfcor, Arthur Or ton, to support his unjust claims to the Tichborne estate. To my mind the cases run on parallel lines. I will not take up your space in tiic present letter by traversing Mr Kind's arguments, but I consider the affairs of the country are in a very critical state ; our national debt, under a self-styled non-borrowing Government, is crowing very much larger, and, consequently, there is more interest to send to London, and to raise it we may have 110,000 to .±20,000 per annum extra to pay in Customs duties. How the laborers under these circumstances are to got food and clothing for themselve3and families with the present scarcity of work and low wages I cannot divine. John "Willies, in the reign of George 111, spent a fortune in fighting for and establishing the principle that every Britisher's house is his castle, even .though it might ouly be a mud hut, and so strongly do I see the necessity of awakening the bucolic element to the danger of the headlong course of our colony to financial and utter ruin, that if I had as much money to spend as John Wilkes had I would stump the colony to combat the dangerous and impracticable doctrines of the Ground Rent Revenue League, and the Socialistic legislation of our present Government, and New Zealand should owe to George Wilks the reestablishment of that great principle which John Wilkes established m Great Britain. As Mr King says, I am a student of the Single Tax doctrine, and I may say also of Socialism, and the conclusions I have arrived at are that the freehold tenure in New Zealand is in danger, audit behoves all freeholders, whether owning a quarter of an acre or a thousand acres, to make themselves acquainted with the full import of this aspect of Socialism. I will give a lecture iv auj 7 part of the West Coast of this Island if settlers will pay my bare expenses, and the cost of room and advertising. My time I will give for the benefit of the colony. I am, etc., George Wilks. Feilding, 22nd August, 1895.