The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1879.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 283, 10 December 1879, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1879.

A public meeting is to be held to-night for the purpose of discussing the Property Assessment Bill, which provides for a means of raising revenue that is decidedly unpopular. Whether any addition to our present burdens, in whatever shape it might be laid upon us, would be favorably regarded is doubtful, but that is not the question. Extravagance and carelessness in the administration of the affairs of the colony when economy and caution should have been exercised, combined with a large falling off in the receipts from land sales, have rendered it necessary ;that more funds should be extracted from the pockets of the people, and a property tax has been selected as the best means towards this end. It is, however, disapproved of, and principally for these three reasons ; that it ia most objectionably inquisitorial, that it taxes property that should not be thus burdeued, and that it allows to go scot free those who are in a positiou to contribute largely to the revenue. The first objection must be patent at once to all who

have read the Bill ; the second is gradually dawning upon traders who view with alarm the prospect of paying a tax upon a lot of dead stock, the accumulated interest upon which has already made it hopeless to look for any profit from the sale of the article. Iv another tespect too the tax would fall very hardly, namely upon tbe proprietor of such a workshop as a foundry, who must be supplied with expen sive machinery, some of wtiich he uses perhaps only three or four times a year. To tax property of such a description is not only bard— all taxation is hard to bear— but it is inexpedient. The third objection, ihat those escape who ought to pay, is also a just on-?, for the professional wt.n whose _toci_ in trade is small, b_t whose income is large will contribute comparatively nothing Why Major Atkinson should have borrowed from America a measure that was only justified by exceptional circumstances it is difiicuH to say At the time of the great Civil War it became necessary to make a treniendotis effort to preserve v, c country from ruin, and xor this reason burdens were placed upon the people that in the absence of such a pressure would never have been thonght of One of the means devised for obtaining money was the property tax, but surely the circumstances attending its mtroduciou into the United States and into New Zealand are in no way analogous. The great mistake made by the present Treasurer was, we believe, iv attempting to deal with the question at all this session. The land tax, and the re-imposition of the tea and sugar duties, which were not perceptibly felt by any upon whom they fell, while in the aggregate they yielded a handsome sum, wonld have enabled him to tide over all difficulties until the Parliament met in May next, when he might have come dowu with a well digested aud carefully thought out scheme. Instead of that he has brought down a measure, to the probable workiug of which ie is utterly impossible that he could have devoted much consideration. The present Ministry have beea in office about ten weeks, during the first two of which they were incessantly harassed and worried by a powerful and not over scrupulous Opposition, so that it was out of tbeir power during that time to bestow upon the financial difficulties of the colony and the means of meeting them the grave and undisturbed thought they required, and yet it was decided to bring down a measure of such vast importance as the Property Assessment Bill. It showed an eager desire to grapple with the difficulties of the situation at once, but it would have been far wiser to bave deferred dealing with the question uutil after the quiet of the recess, when they would in a position to do so with a better idea of be what their proposals involved. [Since the foregoing was in type we have received the following telegram from Wel lington:— "The Property Assessment Bill was finished in Committee at three o'clock this morning. Agricultural implements in actual use are the only exemption besides the £500. The Bill will pass, but it is hoped that only a halfpenny will be levied. Shipping may escape, as it is difficult to tax foreign ships, and inadvisable to tax colonial ones only."]