South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1893.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 7075, 22 February 1893, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1893.

We hare received from Mr A. A. Barnett, I J.P.j vice-Prosident of the Wellington Liberal Association, a tract containing an address delivered by him on the subject of “ compulsory assurance in order to make a provision for old age.” This is a subject which is “ taken up” from time to time at different centres in the colony, worried at for a time, and then left to ferment or dry up as the case may be, until soma one feels inclined for another attack upon it. And the same is true with regard to the question in England, though there the intervals have lately been shortened. Mr Barnett’s scheme is to begin at once with the indigent aged over 70 years, and give them an annuity of 10s per week each, from the moneys received as succession duties, increasing these to made up a sufficient amount. There is a good deal in hia argument that those who have • amassed much wealth should be in this way compelled to leave some of it to the aged poor. Then to provide for all over CO years ho proposes a national insurance fund to which everyone should pay £lO in early life, in a lump sum or by instalments ; and in order to compel payment he proposes to disfranchise every man and woman unless the stipulated instalments or the lump sum have been paid. This he thinks is the best kind •of compulsion that could be applied. He admits that there is much to recommend the proposal that the State should tako the bull by the horns, undertake the duty of providing for the aged, and defray the cost out of the general taxation, and that there is little to be said against it except the huge addition it would make to the general taxation. Ko doubt it would make a large addition to the general taxation, but so also would the payment he suggests, of Igs per annum for 20 years from the younger people, for the purpose of creating a fund, which, after all. would be insufficient. In any case preliminary payments are but a robbing of Peter to pay Paul. These payments cannot be put into a stocking and buried till the contributors became 60. As far as the community is concerned, it does not signify through what forma tho future demands upon its wealth are built up. The strain of them will bo felt with the same severity. With Mr Barnett’s general argument we can cordially agree : “ When an infant is left without parents or guardians, or when a child is left with an estate and no administrator, the Government intervenes, and says these are so-called wards in Chancery, and we have to exercise supervision over them, So it should, be when mortals have reached the allotted span of life and become incapacitated, poor, and unfriended, and still live on. Then tho State may, in the cause o* mercy and humanity, come to the rescue, and consider that those have become cur wards and wo will allow them, say, 10s per week for their sustenance for the rest of their days.”