THE PROPOSED TAX UPON GRAIN.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 815, 22 August 1870, Page 4

THE PROPOSED TAX UPON GRAIN.

[Nelson Exaininer.J

We have been told recently of a lunatic who took it into his head —which was exceedingly sensible on most subjects —that he should not eat his food voluntarily. It became necessary every day to encase him in a straitjacket, and to wait upon him with a physician and a couple of attendants to put his food, which ho required and knew he required, into him with a stomach-pump. But though a lunatic, he came to understand the false economy of refusing to eat his food, and causing the expense of two or three attendants daily to ensure its being duly eaten. And he soon left off the practice, therefore. The income which might suffice him for sustenance and much besides, would soon have been been greatly impoverished when the expense of needless attendance was created by him. New Zealand is invited now , to become such a lunatic. She gets her food some in the colony itself, some from Australia and from America, and gets it at the least ex pense she can. But Mr Vogel, her head at present, prefers to have her fed with a stomach-pump. Food she likes and can obtain cheaply is to be rejected, and food which she likes less, or which costs more to prepare, is to be pumped down her throat in her own despite. When the news of such folly goes home, we fear the guarantee ol the loan will be a subject for bitter repentance there. " It is impossible to help some people," will be our very mildest condemnation, to the great pre judice of the Colony hereafter. We should like to see a Minister with the courage to propose some form or other of direct taxation. There appears far too much anxiety in the Colonies concerning the unwillingness of the subjects to bear necessary taxes, unless disguised as Customs duties. Men are treated with glaring inequality and injustice on a pretended ground—as it seems to us —that they are in very considerable number unable to coinpre bend and act up to some simple pro position that would operate fairly on a great number of men alike. We con less we have not witnessed in colonists generally that wilful, constaut resolve to evade small obligations before the public eye, which ought to have been exhibited ill order to justify the dealing with all men as thongh they were confessed cheats. If, for a well-known common purpose, neighbors agree each to contribute a sufficient sum, say six-

pence each, and some overbearing man by ways of his own chooses to get a larger coin instead from each neighbor, out of which he cuts and files the requisite sixpence and loses all else, such action, if endured at all, is certainly not endured because it is voluntarily preferred. If some Minister would commence an alteration in such a wretched practice* and when he states how much is wanted, and for what purpose, would declare how much each should pay, and devise a simple way of correcting evasion by those who have means but who fail to pay, we are persuaded the whole country would rapidly derive benefits from such an innovation on the present practice. At ail events, we trust the present proposition to tax the necessaries of every struggling colonist in New Zealand, whether he have means or not, will be rejected for the sake of the best and permanent interests of the whole population of the Colony.