THE GENERAL ELECTION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2720, 7 December 1881, Page 2

THE GENERAL ELECTION.

CAPTAIN SUTTER AT FAIRLIE CREEK.

Captain Sutter addressed a meeting of the Gladstone electors in the schoolroom at Fairlie Creek last night, and Mr J, Gall was voted to the chair. The meeting listened most attentively throughout the address, and frequently applauded the speaker. Captain Sutter commenced with an earnest appeal to his hearers to exercise their political power with care and circumspection, as their choice of a representative was as important as would be the choice of a guardian of their private property if they were going on a long journey. He then intimated that the chief subjects he would speak upon would be the land laws, the disposal of runs, direct taxation, reform of the Legislative Council, and the education question. The Land Question. —The land laws, he pointed out, had been framed by the squatters, the earlier settlers, who, in framing them, had looked at things from their own point of view. For the result of this he did not blame them so much as he blamed the people at large for not earlier taking steps to influence their legislation. The thanks of the people were due to the Hall Government for having passed the new electoral laws, by which the representation had been made more democratic in character, and gave the people generally a greater voice in the making of laws. The existing land laws had been obstructive to settlement through affording facilities for the looking up of large areas from profitable occupation, and consequently revenues from railways, Customs, and other sources were much less than they would have been under laws more favorable to settlement. People had been induced to come out by representations made to them at Home of the splendid nature of the country, to find upon arrival that the immediately available country was all taken up. But instead of the land being used beneficially, it was simply held for speculative purposes, and the holders having the assistance of English capital, could afford to hold out against the colonial capitalists. The country had, therefore, got into a bad state as a field for settlement, and, as would always be the case under such circumstances, the most enterprising men were leaving it for more flourishing countries, taking their capital with them. If these men could have got land at fair prices they would have remained. As an instance of the extent to which the laws had been taken advantage of, he mentioned that there were 17 estates in Canterbury aggregating 2,400,000 acres, the smallest of these containing 35,000 acres. There was no wonder that in winter time men were seeking relief, and were glad to get away from the district. These laws prevented the fulfilment of the first law given to man ; Adam and Eve were commanded to increase and multiply, and replenish the earth—not to stock it with sheep. (Applause.) The locking up of the country made it difficult to find employment for all who were in it now, and unless a change occurred he could not see how the children growing up were going to find employment. The Levels estate was an instance at their own doors of the disastrous effects of the land monopoly. If it were cut up into 400 farms it would support 3000 people directly, whereas 20 or 30 was all it supported permanently in its present state. A proper population on that estate would largely increase the railway, Customs, postal, and other revenues, ahd were all the large estates properly settled, these revenues would he so largely increased that direct taxation would be quite unnecessary. The owners were bolding out for high prices for the land, hut they had done nothing to give it that value. It was the expenditure of borrowed money on railways and roads that gave the land its increased value, and that money had to be repaid by the people. (

Thinking, men had come to the eonclusionthat these large blocks must not be allowed to remain in the state they were. They must be forced into the market, and this could be done by imposing a tax upon them that would make it unprofitable to hold them. The tax should be progressive, increasing with the size of the estates. What should be the starting point he was not prepared to say : whether one, two, or three thousand acres ; this would be a matter for compromise with other advocates of such a tax. 'One thing was certain, however, the holders of big estates must be made to cut them up, as their being held, as at present, was making life difficult for the rest of the people. (Applause.) The Premier at Leeston had spoken of a progressive land tax as a vindictive tax ; but it was not more vindictive than the income tax of Great Britain. There it was considered that the income tax was necessary in the interests of the community, and the breaking up of the land monopoly was necessary in the interests of this community. The English income tax was a progressive tax of throe grades, and the Premier had no more right to call the proposed land tax a vindictive one than he had to call the English income tax vindictive. It was wrong to argue that having bought the land a man had a right to use it as he pleased—to the injury of the community if it so happened. This argument was not allowed in other cases ; laws were passed to regulate the management of shipping, factories, mines, and other things in the interest of the public, and it was hard to see why landed proprietors should be the only proprietors to bo allowed to act to the public detriment. There was no doubt that the large landholders were acting contrary to the_ public welfare, and this must be put a stop to. Bad as the freehold monopoly was,he considered the monopoly of the runs in Canterbury to be even worse. He traced the steps by which this monopoly had been secured till 1892, showing that the Upper House had been greatly to blame in the matter. The Canterbury runs ought to be cut up in 1882 as the Otago runs were to be, into blocks of from 500 to 5000 acres, according to the qualities of the soil and tire features of the co antry, and sold on very easy terras of deferred payment. The hills around the district they were in would cut up into scores of good 5000-acre sheep farms that men could settle down on and make homes for themselves. It was urged in reply to him that the country dealt with was poor and not worth the fuss made about it ; but it was not a question of whether the land was good or bad ; the lessees ought not to have had their leases extended without competition. Thejsquatters’ estimates of the value of their runs could not be accepted, as was proved by the rents obtained for the Oamaru Harbor Board’s endowment, which when cut up into three, returned £3OOO a year, while the original owner said he could not afford to pay more than £750 for it. Another case was the Benmore run, leased from Government at £SOO a year, and sub let, without a head of stock, at £3OOO a year. The men who passed the law extending the leases, ought to be impeached for sacrificing the country, and not a hundred years ago men lost their heads on the block for much smaller offences. There was one remedy possible—the land could be opened up for sale at a fixed price, but that price was too high at present. The price could be lowered—to half-a crown an acre if necessary—and put up to auction at that upset price. The whole of the public estate had been grossly mismanaged, and as a portion of that mismanagement the Public Works scheme had been ruined by the striking out of the clause in the Bill that provided for lands benefited by railways being specially rated, interested persons in the House managing to squeeze that out, and get the benefit of the railway expenditure without making any adequate return.

Direct taxation.—He had been written down because of his advocating the land tax as better than the property tax. The property tax was held up as a model tax; it was said that it only fell upon the rich, and that the poor did not feel it at all. Yet he met two small farmers last week who showed him, one that he paid £5 more under the property tax than he did under Sir George Grey’s land tax, and the other that he paid £1 more. He had no doubt that if farmers looked into it they would see that, if mortgages were deducted as they ought to be, they would not have so much to pay under the land tax as they had under the property tax. Land was property as well as houses, and to say that the property tax did not touch farmers, was simply an attempt to gull them. He r ad an extract from a Parliamentary report, showing that of 87,105 freehold properties at the time the assessment was made, 67,000 were exempt from the tax. He would ask them how many such properties were exempt under the property tax, and had no hesitation in saying not half so many. He had been charged with advocating the land tax in order to relieve his town property. This was a most iniquitous charge, and a most absurd one. He had more property in the country than in the town, and he would cut his own throat by doing such a thing. It was a mere election dodge. It \fas utter nonsense to say that the towns would escape under a land tax, while some town lands were assessed at £4OOO an acre. There was a . clique in Timaru who thought it would answer their purposes to raise the cry of town against country, and they managed to raise it in this way. It was a foolish cry, for town and country were mutually dependent. Timaru wanted nothing from the country except it were for the harbor works, and these would be quite as much for the benefit of the farmer as for the town storekeeper. He had to ship his grain, and twopence a bushel saved on that would be an object to him. He made this explanation because a good deal had been written in the “ Timaru Herald ” lately about the taxes, articles which were sickening to him to read. The exemptions under the property tax were insisted on by the writers as if there had been no exemptions under the land tax, whereas the property tax exemptions had been simply copied from the Land Tax Act. People who knew anything at all about the matter, however, would not be gulled by the “ Herald.” (Applause). If any direct taxation were wanted, he would favor an income tax. In some years farmers made nothing at all, and yet they were expected to pay the property tax on their land, improvements, and plant, as if they were making good profits. This was most unfair. If they did make anything it would be fair enough to tax them in proportion, and the more they made the better they

could afford to pay, so the tax should be progressive, as in England. One great fault he found with the present property tax was that the richer men did not pay a fair proper, tion. They were allowed to be their own assessors and ho felt confident they were let off most unfairly. Not many know this perhaps, but it was the fact. Their sheep wore valued at 5s a head, not half the market value, and he was pretty confident the large land holdings were equally leniently dealt with. The very fact of their wealthier men praising the property tax was suspicious. Men did not praise a tax unless there was something under the rose about it. An income tax was necessary to touch professional men. It was said that professional men must invest in property if they made money. They might do so, but it would be some time before they would become amenable to taxation through that property, and in the meantime they escaped. There was no reason why a doctor, for instance, should not pay upon the capital invested in his education—which formed his business stock—while a grocer had to pay upon an equal capital invested in his stock in trade. There were large numbers of officials at Wellington drawing big salaries, and an income tax would fairly fall upon these. He was not, however, disposed to interfere with the property tax during the remainder of the three years for which it was imposed, except to make such alterations as would make it fall fairly upon the large sheepowners. There should be no sending schedules to Wellington, to be accepted there without question, and then hid len from view.

The Upper House.—Captain Sutter spoke very strongly against the system of nominating the members of the Upper House for life. It was too much like a reproduction of the state of affairs in European countries, where but a few years ago there were but two classes : tyrant lords, and practical slaves. A strong effort should be made to prevent anything of that sort ever getting a footing in this colony. It was connected with the land question, and the system of landlordism. The people should set their face against this, and strive to get the land cultivated by small proprietors. The landlord system had been the curse of Great Britain, Ireland was now striving violently to get rid of it, and must finally succeed in it, and Scotland had now her Land League. The system should be stamped out here before it got a firmer footing. He had been in Belgium and Holland, where the small farm system was carried out to a great extent, and he never saw a more prosperous people in any part of the world. The Premier, a little bilious at the rejection of some of his measures by the Upper House, proposed to reform it, first by proposing that the members should be elected by the House of Representatives, and .later, that they should be elected on Hare’s system. Both these systems Captain Sutter objected very strongly to, as being no improvement upon the present system. He desired to see the members elected directly by the people in the same way that the members of the Lower House are.

Education.—ln speaking on this subject, Captain Sutter mentioned his efforts some years ago to get a national system established in order io overtake the rapidly increasing demand for school accommodation and education. The system worked well for a time, but the Catholics were not satisfied because religion was not taught and Protestants because the Bible was not used in the schools. The Catholics commenced to build schools for themselves, and then asked for the capitation grant,and 90 per cent of the Protestants showed that they wanted the Bible read. If Bible reading was granted it would entirely destroy the national character of the schools, because Catholics could not conscientously send their children to schools where the Protestant Bible (the one intended) was read, and their conscientious scruples should be respected. It was a bad thing in any country for any large section of people to labor under a permanent grievance, and the sooner such a grievance was removed the better. The Catholics had built good schools in several places and it was only just that they should receive the capitation grant, if the schools were efficiently conducted. It would not add to the expenses of education, for if the children went to the public schools the grant would have to be paid. He had been taunted with refusing to bring in a Bill to give the Catholics this justice. His reply was that it was no use any one member promising to bring iu a Bill on such an important subject. It could only be done by a strong party, and the only promise it would be reasonable for him to make was that he would join and assist, or if necessary try to get up such a party in the next Parliament if he were returned, iu order to give effect to his views on this question. (Applause). He would give the Catholic schools the capitation grant, and allow the Committees of the public schools, or a majority of the householders, as might be thought more advisable, to decide as to Bible reading. Another direction in which the Education Act needed amendment was the election of the Boards. He spoke at some length on the defects of the present system and advocated the elections being conducted as Road Board elections are. The Boards also should be amenable to the Lower Law Courts in case any offences were alleged against them, instead of charges having to be taken to the Supreme Court, as was the case of Walcot v. Howell. He did not consider it the duty of the State to provide secondary education at all. The Fairlie Creek Railway—He held that it was a great injustice on the part of the Government to ignore the existing township of Fairlie Creek and fix the terminus of the railway at a distance from it. Whenever people had formed a township they had a right to be considered, and if the Governmene insisted upon placing the station so far away he would do his utmost to securt a siding at the township. (Applause.) He thought it only just to himself to mention that he had been instrumental in getting the railway extension pushed on even so slowly as it had been, and he read letters that had passed between him and the authorities showing what steps he had taken to get the works opened for the absorption or the unemployed in May 1880. By doing this he had “ killed two dogs with one bone, o-ettiug work for those who much required it, and getting the railway extended to the Creek. (Loud applause.) This concluded Captain Sutter’s address, and the Chairman invited the meeting to question the candidate. In reply to Mr Clowes Captain Sutter said the revenues of the Tirnaru High School consisted of about £9OO from rents of lapd epdowments, and £130,0 to £I4OO from school fees, of tm*

guineas each. The surplus, after paying the staff and expenses, was set apart for scholarships for pupils of the lower schools. There were six of these scholarships this year. Mr Clowes then proposed and Mr Biddle seconded a vote of thanks and confidence in Captain Sutter as an efficient person to return to Parliament, and this was carried by acclamation. Captain Sutter returned thanks for the meeting’s strong expression of confidence in him, and proposed a vote of thanks to the Chairman. The meeting then separated. DR FISHER AT ALBUEY. ' Dr Fisher addressed a well attended meeting of electors in Mr Macalister's store at Albury last evening, and was attentively listened to. Mr John Eutherford was voted to chair. After Dr Fisher had explained his views, ft number of questions were put to him by members of the meeting and satisfactorily answered. A vote of thanks and confidence was passed to him at the conclusion of the meeting.