PATEA MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1880. THE INQUISITION.

Patea Mail, Volume VI, Issue 532, 12 June 1880, Page 2

PATEA MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1880. THE INQUISITION.

The Property Assessment Act is still being anxiously enquired about. The Government have promised to exempt personal effects from the amount of a man’s taxable property, these effects including his watch, his sleeve-links, his silver-mounted whip, his wife’s jewellery (if the hard times have left her any), and such odds and ends as these. But the really objectionable feature of the tax is the compulsory disclosure of details to show what he owes, what is owing to him, what bills he has “ floating,” what engagements he has with the bank, and other delicate mysteries that no man in his senses thinks of disclosing to his bosom friend. The Government are being pressed by questions in the House, but the only concession “screwed” out of them is the surrender of personal effects. It is marvellous how these “ personal effects ” ever came under taxation as “property.” Was a man not to be allowed to present his wife with a wedding-day souvenir in the shape of a brooch, without having to account for it to the Government' as taxable property ? Such political bungling as this passes the bounds of toleration. The average man has been too incensed even to pity the political inquisitors who play these , tricks on common sense. Having “ conceded ” personal effects as exempt from taxation, the other wretched machinery of this wretched Act is to be worked without mercy. Every property holder is still to be compelled to give a statement of the description, situation, and value of all mortgages, ' encumbrances, or charges on his. property; must reveal, also, every sum owing by or payable to him in any.manner whatsoever. He must lay bare his innermost secrets. If the object the Government had in view in pressing for such an Act was to make it as vexatious and intolerable to the people as possible, they; certainly did their work ;to perfection. It is better suited for a Russian than a British colony; and is neither creditable to the lawyer who drafted it, to the Government that proposed it, nor to the Parliament that passed it.;