A TAX ON BACHELORS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1074, 21 July 1871, Page 2

A TAX ON BACHELORS.

The following letter appears in the Sydney * Town and Country Journal' The idea ||is not quite original, but the case is well stated : —" Sir,—At the present time ? when the new year's financial ! scheme is engrossing the attention of the public generally, as well as of their representatives in Parliament, and in view of the probable large amount which will require to be extended on roads and bridges, and other indispensable public works in 1871, any scheme (however Utopian it may seem at first sight.) for increasing the revenue, is at any rate entitled to the consideration of the thinking portion of the community. Ic has occurred to me, then—ras a married man —that a tax on bachelors would not only be just and equitable, but would also tend greatly to improve the condition of the colonial cash box, and I think it only right tot ventilate this idea, with your permission, in the widely-read columns of the Town and Country Journal, hoping that good may ensue from its publication. I would suggest that all bachelors between 25 and 30 years of age be taxed £5 annually; between 30 and 35, £Q; and so on, increasing the tax ,£1 per annum for every additional 5 years of celibacy. I think when my bachelor friends had got used to this arrangement, few even of themselves woiild object to what seems to me would be such areasonable impost. As to the young ladies ! there can be no doubt as to their concurrence, and I feel sure that all my brother Benedicks will at once endorse my suggestion. If the bachelors prefer their idle, butterfly existence, their selfish luxuries and amusements, to the sober pleasures and increasing duties of matrimonial life, why, in the name of reason and justice, should they object to pay such a trifle as .£5 or «£6 for their liberty ? Then, again, we married men now pay much more than our proportion of the revenue by reason of our larger consumption of dutiable articles in the shape of clothing, &c, for our wives and children. The bachelor only consumes an equal quantity of dutiable articles to the paterfamilias— excepting, possibly, in the ariiele of cigars—the latter being handicapped in the race of life—wofully handicapped—with a family, while the incomes of young married men and young bachelors, I should think, would average throughout without any great disparity. Under these circumstances, I do not see that any portion of the community could reasonably, or would at all, object to this suggestion being carried out, while its effect would be eilh'-r to materially augment the public coffers, or the population—either result being favorable to the future of the colony, an increasing revenue naturally foil owing an increasing populatim. Trusting abler pen than mine will now take the matter up, I am, Sir, yours, &c, Benedick—P.S. —lf I were again a bachelor, how gladly would—but I hear Maria coming."