The Weekly Times. “Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri." MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1867. TOLLGATES.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 42, 14 October 1867, Page 254

The Weekly Times. “Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri." MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1867. TOLLGATES.

The Tollgate system is an exploded method of taxation : the remains of a barbarous age: it is false in principle, oppressive in its operation, and extravagantly costly in its collection, seldom yielding as revenue fifty per cent, of the sums abstracted from the public, generally very much less, and often scarcely anything over the cost of collection. If it is true that we must submit to local taxation, by all means let such methods be adopted as will yield to the revenue as great proportion as possible of the money we are called upon to pay, so that the cash paid in taxes may be devoted to its legitimate use.—H.B.T., July 18

Althouth abstractedly considered the taxing of the traffic over a road or bridge for the maintenance of such highway appears at first sight an unobjectionable method of raising the funds for such work, it becomes far otherwise under certain circumstances, as in a case such as that now before the Hawke’s Bay public, where a single road amongst several is proposed to be taxed while all others are to remain free from such burthen. In fact, it can only hold the semblance of justice or equity when it is made of universal application, and only then when the revenue so obtained is strictly devoted to the maintenance ot the particular highway or bridge on which it is raised. In a colony where population is scant and traffic limited? it is evident enough that the cost ol collecting tolls on the several roads would bo far too heavy to allow this method to be universally applicable, and this consideration, coupled with that of the folly of checking traffic by any such tax as would avail for the purposes, is sufficient to condemn the principle of tolls in all such cases.

But if the principle itself is unsound, even in the event of tolls being applied to their legitimate object, much mure is it so where, as iu the case uuder consideration, it is proposed to devote the tolls so raised to the pur poses of general revenue. If the objection to tolls for road maintenance is too great to admit of the adoption of the principle, the proposal to apply them to the general revenue must merit universal condemnation. In the first place on the score of its cost of collection; it is abundantly evident that if, as has already been shewn, the scantiness of the population and limited traffic precludes the system of tolls being adopted as means of. providing for road maintenance, on account of the great proportion of the sums raised being absorbed in its collection, the self-same reason would exist against the scheme as a source of revenue. Secondly—The. partial introduction of the scheme, by the es» tablishment of a single tollgate on one particular road as a source of revenue, must be at once condemned as altogether partial and unfair. Again, the introduction of such a system would open the door ; to the grossest of abuses ; let it be once conceded that tolls may be used ; for revenue purposes, and the ease with which such a screw could, be. applied,would make the Government adopt it very generally. If, tolls did not, pay in any particular case they would, be raised and the cost of collection not

increased, but the tax would operate in just the sande proportion in retarding commerce and checking industry, which rather wants fostering and encouraging.. Further, as the tolls would, as all taxes must, fall not on the first payer but on the consumer, and as poor are the. great consumers of such goods as would be most largely: conveyed, it would be open to aU the objections of the Custom’s tariff, and, in addition to this, that it would be levying taxes on our own produce. Lastly—By raising tolls for revenue, the only argument by which they could be justified is abandoned ; that which is founded on the obligation of those who use a road to effect its maintenance—because it is not pretended that any part of the tolls to be raised should be so applied.