The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1869.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 170, 3 August 1869, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1869.

We are glad to find that the proposal of the Government to Uvy a tax upon imported wheat and flour is likely to meet with strong opposition in Nelson. We confess that it was with no little surprise we learned that the Colonial Treasurer had proposed to perpetuate in this Colony a system which has received such universal condemnation in the home country, and we consider that there exist fill the more grounds for raising ati immediate outcry against its introduction on account of the seemingly innocent manner in which it has been brought forward. i | The Government have arrived at the conclusion of recommending the House to assent to the imposition of a small duty on flour and grain, to contiuue only whilst the price of these articles 4oes -not exceed a maximum to be stated. In such insinuating language does Mr. Yogel moot the subject, and really after all it doea not appear at the first glance to be worth while to make any stir about a tax by which'th'e trifling snm of £14,000 only is to be raised from a population of some 260,000. But there arises the awkward I question — where is it going to end ? If the £14,000 is paid without a murmnr, what guarantee have we that next year the Treasurer will not come down, and in his most dulcet tones remark that the Government have arrived at the conclusion of recommending the House to assent to a slight increase in the duty on flour, &c, and then proceed to show how £28,000 instead of £14,000 maybe raised during the ensuing twelvemonths. Our contemporary in this morning's issue states that this new duty will be denounced as the thin end of the wedge of protection, and he is perfectly right. True, the insertion of the thin eud will make but a very slight impression, but unless it be at once stoutly resisted, the blows of the mallet, weighted as it will be with " fiscal necessity," will year by year become more and more telling, and the people of New Zealand • will learn to regret that they were content to lie motionless as a log when the evil first threatened them. . The Colonial Treasurer himself evidently had grave misgivings as to the reception this new tax would meet with, for he takes care to tell the House that he is not going to let them know whether the Government are in favor of protection, or free trade, but they merely propose this tax, first, because it is an easy way of raising £14,000; and second, (i because the fiscal policy of Victoria seems to force it upon us." Let us suppose for a m'oment that a pickpocket is on his trial before a jury, and the only defence he sets up is that "he does not assert abstract doctrines of either honesty or dishonesty, buttbat he Jook the purse, because the fact of some one else having stolen his seemed to force this course upon him." His chance of acquittal would surely be very small ; we even doubt "whether the jury would recommend him to mercy.