Page 4 Advertisements Column 5

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 1988, 25 January 1907, Page 4

oxncts tho greatest' rent which can bo got for his ground.” Iticardo, auothor groat economist, says: “A tax on rout would full wholly upon the landlords, and could not bo shifted to any class of consumers.” John Stuart Mill, the famous philosopher and political economist, says:—“A tax on rent, falls wholly on the landlord. There are no moans by which ho can shift tho burden upon any ono else.” Prolessoiv Thorold Rogers says tho same thing. Henry George says:—“A tax on land values does not. 1 add to prices, and is thus paid _ directly by tho person on whom it falls; whereas all taxes upon things of unfixed quantity incroaso prices, and in the course of exehango aro shifted from seller to buyer, increasing as they go. If wo impose a tax upon buildings, the users of buildings must finally pay it, for tho erection of buildings will cease until building routs booomo high enough to pay the regular profits and the tax besides Now the way taxes raise prices is by increasing tho cost of production and checking supply But land is not a thing of human production, and taxes upon rout cannot check supply. Therefore, though a tax on rent compels the landowners to pay nior it gives them no power to obtain more for tho use of their land, as it in no way tends to reduce the supply of land. On tho contrary, by compelling those who hold land on speculation to sell or let for what they can got a tax on land values tends to inci-on.se tho competition between owners, and thus re-

(luco the price of land.” AVe never hear of tobacco merchants complaining about he. tax on tobacco. WhyP Because they don’t pay it. But whorcver a tax is imposed upon land values the landowners complain loudly. Won Id they grumble and growl so much if they, didn’t pay it? Of course not. Bent is reduced by the amount of the tax, and this is the reason why in every country in the world landowners most strenuously resist any attempts to tax rent. STATE-PRO VIDKD HOMES AND STATE FOOD SHOPS. The Government think that Stateprovided homes at 1 a low and fixed rent -will bring down the rent of land. The truth is that these dwellings will imt up the price of all adjacnt land, and all workers who have not the good fortune to securo State homes will be worse off than they were before Has not the closer settlement policy of the Government increased the price of all the land immediately surrounding the closer settlements? AVe all know that it lias. So the Government housing policy is no remedy. But I should like to know why houses should bo provided for a few of the workers only. That is to make a privileged class of workers. And why should houses he lot at loss than the market value? The right course is to tax out the unimproved value, and thus give the workers the host chance of building their own houses. AVhen wages are high, work plentiful, and the cost of jiving low, the workers can easily provide their own homes.

STRANGE MURDER CASE. CURIOUS PROBLEM. LONDON, December To. Ti is generally felt that Mr Herbert Gladstone, as Homo Secretary, will have a difficult decision to make in the Preston murder case, which lias developed in a very surprising manner. The main facts arc as follows: —A man named Callaghan is lying in the prison at Manchester under sentence of death for the murder of a Preston drysnlter last May. Ho was tried at the recent Manchester Assizes, and with him in the dock stood another man called Heard wood. Roth were accused of the same crime, but the jury who convicted Callaghan disagreed as to Beardwood, and a now trial was ordered, which reached its conclusion at Liverpool on Saturday. Beardwood was then pronounced not guilty. Public opinion in Preston is intensely hostile to him, and expressed itself in fierce rioting on Sunday, but nothing can alter the fact that a jury has declared him innocent. At the second trial, however, a highly dramatic surprise was sprung upon the Court in the appearance of a convict named Bennett, who swore that when lie was taking exercise last month in the prison yard at Preston Beardwood spoke to him, and told him that he had committed the murder, and that Callaghan had nothing to do with it. The jury, by their verdict, showed that they did not accept this evidence, as true, yet the mere fact that such a story was told has compelled the Home Secretary to make further investigations into the case of Callaghan. Consequently, the condemned man has been respited for a week, and the whole circumstances of the crime are exciting a wider interest than ever.

It appears that the victim was an eccentric drysalter, who slept at his place of business, content with a litter of papers to lie on and odd pieces of matting for bedclothes. His habits were well known, and it is probable enough that such miserly eccentricity gave rise to the belief that ho was well off, and hoarded sums of money about the promises. This man was found by his nephew at oight o’clock one morning lying Murdered on the floor of his office, with his head cruelly battered in bv a heavy spanner ; and the medical evidence showed that lie had probably been dead about five or six hours. There was no doubt about the motive. The safe had been broken open, and about £5 taken. Clearly, the' thieves were also the murderers. No arrests were made, but at last the police arrested a man called Callaghan on tho evidence of his paramour, whom he had threatened to murder; some time after a second man, named Beardwood, was also arrested. The two were said to have been together on the night of tho murder, and to have been seen together by different persons in the early morning after the crime had been committed. It was brought to light at tho first trial that Callaghan went to his paramour’s house at two in the morning, and while there burned his cap ami muffler, which had bloodstains-upon them, washed other bloodstains out of his clothes, and showed tho woman two sovereigns. To that evidence ho owned his conviction. Beardwood’s defence was that ho never was in Callaghan’s company at all on the evening before the murder, but that on leaving his tripedressing shop, about eight o’clock at night, he went straight to the houso where he was living, and never moved out until eight or nine on tho following morning. The woman with whom ho was then cohabiting confirmed his story, as did also her daughter, who said she slept in the same room, and rose as usual at live in the morning to go to work at the mill. One of the extraordinary features of the case was that Beardwood married this woman in September, though it was admitted that she was cohabiting with another man during July, when Beardwood was in gaol for another offence. The prosecution, naturally suspicious on this point, suggested that the marriage was due to Beardwood’s desire to protect himself against her evidence, hut this tho pair stoutly denied. Several witnesses swore that they saw Beardwood during the time when, according to his story, ho was within doors; one said that lie saw smoke coming from Beardwood’s chimney at an unusually early hour, and smelt an odour as of rags or clothes burning ; another declared that he heard Beardwood and his wife quarrelling, and that the woman called him a murderer. Nor did she deny using the" expression; it was a ‘•'usual word” of hors, she said, when they were quarrelling, but she strongly denied having mentioned the victim’s name. Other witnesses again gave evidence that Beardwood had changed his clothes from old ones to new on the day of the, murder, but rebutting evidence on this important point was offered by the defence. The testimony of the convict Bennett was largely discounted by the fact that bo said nothing to anybody of Beardwood’s confession of guilt to him for 1!) days after the conversation took place, and that the two prisoners must have been at least syds apart, and probably more, in the prison yard li hen rhey spoke to one another.

Commenting upon the affair, the paper from which 1 have condensed the account of the facts says: “ The whole case, which is full of irreconcilable discrepancies, throws a lurid light on the mode of life of the criminal and degraded classes; it also illustrates the extraordinary difficulty of obtaining trustworthy evidence from people belonging to these classes. ’

THE PERIL OF OUR TIME. In Lung Disease. Dr. Sheldon’s New Discovery for Coughs, Colds, and Consumption cures lung trouble. Small dose. Pleasant to' take. Every bottle guaranteed. For sale by A. W. J. Mann, Agent, Chemist. ANXTOFS MOMENTS. I One of the most anxious times of a mother’s life is when her little ones have croup. There is no other medicine so effective in this terrible malady as Dr. Sheldon’s New Discovery. It can be safely given and depended ujion. No mother should ever be without a bottle in the house. For salo by A. W. J. Mann, Agent, Chemist.