CORRESPONDENCE.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 142, 30 July 1880, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

THU BEER TAX. To tmk Editor. Sir, —The BeorTax proposed by the present (Government meets with hostility from the most opposite quarters, hirst come the brewers and publicans. The great difhcultv with them seems to he to decide who is j to bear the extra burden that is thus put upon the odass of beer. Brewers maintain that ilie.y pay the tax, and publicans maintain that iluyeamml. 11 -e. ii is dear thai ii must he paid by tin- enii-mmei : hut

her, .a.tim-idic dilliculiy. the amountul tile tax on each xd-ass is about one-lialf-penuy, and Gi.Ul or even 4d, is not a con venient sum sum to charge for- ;i glass of beer, wliilca tax of a half penny per glass is not a sufficient excuse forraising the price to (id. lhe easiest solution of this difficulty would he to increase the tax say to 'id a glass or 2s a gallon. The publican would then be able to charge, (id a glass, and the Colonial 'Treasury would he still further replenished. Secondly, some total abstainers are opposed to the tax, on the ground that every addition to the revenue derived from the sale of intoxicating liquors will he a new obstacle in the way of that prohibitory legislation, which they desire and strive to obtain. This attitude on their part seems to be unwise. Prohibitory legislation will never be obtained until tbe majority of our legislators come to see that tbe liquortraffi© is an unmitigated evil. \\ lien they come to see that, no fiscal considerations will prevent them troni agreeing to those measures which the welfare of the country demands. Meantime it is only fair that the drinking community should, by means of this tax, contribute somewhat towards the cost entailed by the crime and pauperism so largely caused by the drinking habits of the people. Thirdly, some theorists object to the taxon tbe ground that it is a burden falling on one of our industies, —in other words because it will injure a trade which benefits our own people. The fallacy of this argument, so far as the drink traffic is concerned, will be manifest when it is considered who are the parties who benefit by the traffic, and what is tbe proportion of advantage that falls to each. Those parties may, for the sake of argument, be divided into two classes. The one class includes the ; manufacturers of be er, the sellers of beer, i public-house servants, so far as they are engaged in the sale of liquor, and that too large a class of persons who get a miserable existence by hanging on at the doors and back yards of licensed premises. It might be easily shown that for the purpose of this discussion it is the manufacturer of beer alone that is entitled to be considered, but taking it at its broadest, it will surely be admitted that it would be an immense gain to the country if tbe labor of all tbe classes above mentioned were turned into other channels in which it would produce really j useful commodities, yielding a fair profit to the producers and conferring a real benefit upon the purchasers. The other class of persons supposed to be benefitted by the beer industry consists of farmers and others , who produce the materials from which tha beer is brewed. Take the case of the farmers, who are probably by far the largest | gainers in this respect. What is tbe amount of profit they reoeivo, and what j does it cost the country to confer this gain upon them t If the people of a given town ; spend a thousand pounds on beer, bow much of this money goes to benefit tbe 1 farmer ’! In all probability not more than one hundred pounds, if so much. If the people of this Colony were to combine and buy up all tbe barley from tbe fanners, gather it into one great heap, and burn it, there would be a tremendous outcry about the waste, but it would in reality be an immense gain, for under the present system the people of the country spend ten times as much upon that which may he called r/ooil barb;/ xpaibil. It would surely lie an incalculable advantage to them if they would at once make a present of the one-tenth to the farmers and keep the other nine-tenths in their own pockets, rather than throw sway the whole in the purchase of a liquor which a wise man would only pour into the gutter. It seems clear, tnerefore, tiiat this is a local industry which lias no just claim to be regarded as a benefit to the country. Apologising for trespassing so much on your space, I am, &e., UI.TIMI'S.