BETTERMENT BILL.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 56, 3 September 1895, Page 2

BETTERMENT BILL.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAB. Sir, — I purpose with your kind permission writing a series of political articles in your columns arguing the question from data whether the late Mr Ballance was a Statesman or a Political Charlatan, Trickster and Plagiarist. I shall enlarge on this Bill in the course of time, but as it is now before the country, and the Government are endeavouring to force it on the country I deem it better to write you now on this subject. Mr Cadman when moving the second reading of tbe Bill said it was to give effect to the theory (which I have j challenged for proof) that the unearned increment should go to the State. Here we have one of Henry George's theories again ! Theories not put into practice by his own shrewd, practical countrymen, but forced on our unfortunate country hy. I leave my readers to supply the blank according to their command of language. This Bill will impose a special land tax on all the lands through -which future . railways are to run. This is another of the series of steps that have been taken since 1891 to put all the taxes of the country on the land, and thus to practically take away the freehold and as a sequence to utterly ruin the colony. In the first place let me draw your readers' attention to the fact that the Government will not construct a railway in any part of the colony unless there is a prospect, immediate or not far remote, of making the railway pay its way ; in other words it will be as much a commercial transaction as a private venture coach service from say Feilding to Pemberton. Surely no one would be so foolish as to argue that all the settlers on the thirty or forty mile 3of the Kimbolton road should be rated or taxed to support the coach service in addition to paying coach fare when using this means of conveyance ? Some will say, Oh ! but the State i.e., everybody in New Zealand, helps to build the railways. Yes, that is so, but the people get a just and lawful return for the money laid down by passenger fares and produce freight. The State, therefore, under this Bill would not only let its land at a higher rental under that " infernal lease," as Mr Fish the quondam member for Dunedin, calls the lease in perpetuity, but would also (levy a special land tax on these particular lands, that is, if the Government found jceoplelfoolish enough to take up land under these conditions. Again, why should a special land tax be put upon lands not in private hands ? If these lands increase in value in consequence of tbe railway running through them then the Government will receive more taxes under the " Land and Income Tax Act, 1891," then why the necessity for passing this " Betterment Bill ?" unless ie be, as I propose showing by and by, with the deliberate design of eventually nationalising the land by means, not of confiscation or straightforward robbery, but surreptitiously, and by means of putting all the taxes on the land, as Mr Ballance said in bis financial ■ statement of 1891. 1 need hardly say when this step has been reached that land values will have vanished. A fifty acre farm now worth, say, £500, will then be worth only the value of the improve ments on it. The Land Tax exempting all improvements from general taxation was only a sprat to catch a herring. It was done to catch the votes of the country settlers. I am, etc , George Wilks. Feilding, August 23, 1895. P.S.— Since writing the above the Parliamentary Committee have reported on the affairs of the Bank of New Zealand. I would like your readers who take a broad view of the affairs of the country to consider the question of how much effect the craze for purchasing big estates by the present Government, combined with their other Socialistic legislation, has had in preventing the Estates Company realising on their properties. Tbe restrictions on the purchase of freeholds, and their other Socialistic fad?, have had the effect of causing general distrust from one end of the colony to the other. No one can deny the truth of this assertion. The fact that 37,110 persons having over £5,000,000 on deposit in the Bank of New Zealand shows unmistakably the general want of confidence in farming, trade or manufactures. There is neither buying of land by new comers nor engaging in any openings of trade. Verily the country will pay heavily for listening to and acting on the " blarney "of the late Premier.— G.W.