THE WEEK.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 16, 18 January 1879, Page 2

THE WEEK.

The day is at last ftxed for the trial of the long talked of case of Adams v. Pitt, together with the cross action of Pitt v. Adams, and on the 6th of next month, less thau three weeks from the present date, the jury, composed of the electors of Nelson, will be called upon to enter up their verdict. The issues will probably be settled aud laid before the public next week at the meetings which the parties to the suit will of course hold. Each of them, 1 am told, is perfectly confident of the result, so that a disappointment which under the circumstances is sure to be a grievous one must of necessity be in store for one or the other, and for this I, aud, I think, a good many others, feel sorry, for either would make a representative to whom the constituency might advantageously entrust its interests, and of whom it would have no cause to be ashamed. Of course there is a small amount of bettiug on the event— this wouldn't be a British community if there were not— and if one only knew what we shall all know this day three weeks he might pocket a nice little sum on the evening of tho sixth. At the time the Land Tax was first mooted it was urged against it that its collection would prove costly to the country. If all I hear is true this i 3 likely to turn out a correct prophecy, but in a manner very different to that anticipated by the objectors. It seems to me that the principal expense to the colony will be in the direction of the compulsory enlargement of our Lunatic Asylums for the reception of the unhappy property holders, and I arrive at this conclusion from the occasional opportunities I have had of watching the countenances of some of those who had received the slip of blue paper on which is the printed form that is uotv so familiar to every head of a household, aud who were poring over its contents and vainly eudeavoriug to fill up the columus to their own satisfaction or that of the valuer. " Survey District !" exclaims Bill Hobnailj who, after toiling aud saving for years past to buy a bit of land, has just succeeded in making the desired purchase; " Survey District! How the deuce am I to know what to call this survey district? Ara I expected to travel 50 miles to go and hunt up some musty old plans to get hold of this piece of information? Confound the land tax, say I, or, at least, the bit of paper that I've got to fill up before they get it out of me." <• Square on plan of district !" says another, " how the dickens do they suppose I can remember what this is. Wheu I bought my bit of land and paid for it, I got all the deeds and papers stowed away in a lawyer's safe, and thought I had done with all bother about them. But now I've got to go and waste a couple of days in hunting them up. Confound the laud tax!" "Net value" blurts out Tom Axehead, who has just acquired the freehold of 4» or 50 acres of bush land he baa for years held on lease; "let 'em stick up the trees again that it's taken me all this time to chop down and burn, and I wouldn't give a rap for the land. I don't know exactly what that word 'Nil 'in the bottom line meaus but I've a kind of idea that it stands for ' nothing ' from the words I see before and after it. I've a good mind to scratch out the £ that stands after ' Net value ' and write ' Nil ' instead, only I know there's some confouuded fine if you don't do these things quite right, aud that's the way they get over us chaps who've lived for years in the bush aud not paid much attention to reading and writing. Net value indeed! I never got caught in a net like this before, and I hope 1 never will again." The names I have given to my men are of course fancy ones but those to whom they point are representative individuals, and their complaints are those of hundreds who like them are sorely puzzled over tho3e fearfully complicated papers that have recently * been passing through the Postoffice. In the town 1 there are scores of men who have not the least idea how to set to work to fill them up, but they can generally find some ope to do the needful for them. In country districts, however, particularly in those far back where the population is very scattered I should like to know how much is done' in the direction of solving these worse than Chinese puzzles. The papers, when they come in, will lie a charming collection and the countenances of the JHbH, in trying to understand them, will, I J^ginc^fford as fine a study as those of the men who are, at the monteiit I write, perhaps, eudeavoring to make out what they have to do, and, having partially solved that difficulty, are striving to put the information required from them into intelligible shape. Imagine a man who knows a great deal more about ploughing and fencing than he does of reading and spelling being requested to state in a space an inch square the « variety aud quality " of his 150 acre section, part of which is bush, part fern part stony hills, part flax land, and part raupo swamp. "Oh, confound those fellows *n Wellington," I fancy I hear him exclaiming, as the perspiration pours down his face far more freely than It does in the harvest field, after half an hour's endeavor to understand what it is he has to do. "I wouldn't have minded if they'd stuck to the duty on tea and sugar, I wouldn't have minded even if they'd clapped a tax on beer but this— thi3— Oh 1 ' drat 'em ' ! " ' Tom Tippler has written to me, ' objecting to a paragraph in my last Saturday's letter. He says I had no business to credit the people of Nelson with extra good sense, because there were so few " drunks " before the Magistrates at New Year's time, and he gives his reason for the paucity of such cases as follows :-" You see if a fellow had a bit of a spree before the time of the stamp nuisance he]could get over it pretty privately. The " bobby " would take him quietly, put him in the lock-up where he'd have a sleep, go before the beak uext day, pay his five or ten bob, and have done with it. But now he's fined and has to pay it in stamps. Of course, he hasn't got any in his pocketmasters don't pay wages in stamps -so he has to tramp along through Bridge-street with a policeman as a mate, buy his stamps, go back to the station, and hand 'em over. He doesn't like all this bother, and I believe that's the reason he keeps sober." I am sorry to have to tell Tom that he's wrong, for from information I have received, I learn that since fines and costs had to be paid in adhesive stamps there has been more lickering up in the vicinity of the Resident Magistrate's Court than was ever known before. F.