The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1913. MR ISITT’S WRONG CONCLUSIONS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 48, 28 October 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1913. MR ISITT’S WRONG CONCLUSIONS.

Presumably it is iu his role ol' “old• campaigner" tliiit Air L. Ai. I sit t tries to trick us w ith his little tale about j Mary, which appears at the end of his I letter published in another column.i t'nder certain circumstances Mr Isitt’sl homely Alary doubtless might he con-1 sidercd to have done wadi, and to de-j serve credit: hut we are not just now dealing with tlie housekeeping of! Alary. The matter is that of a comparison of taxation rashly and carelessly made for Party purposes from tlie public platform. Air isitt has become notorious for rash statements! both in and out of Parliament, so thei iact need not be surprising;. As to! his letter hi* is (pute wrong in his conclusions as to our “Party:"' we| have none. lie is also incorrect inj assuming that because the weakness of his Stratford speech com]) died some kindly* criticism that criticism necessarily emanated from Party feeling. Mr Isitt is hardly fair to" himself for, unless Ins memory is utterly at fault, he must nearly have blushed at Ins own temerity in trotting out such I ancient relics of Ids famous emotional platform utterances of other days asj updo-data politics. We must con-1 rede Air Isitt that it is a dutv of j

umialism to nt times smite, o'ot it not a “duly” in tiio Party sense h n insinuates so lav as this paper is n mcerned. And now lot Mr Jsiu sii roat point: another wrong conclunn on Ins part lot it ho noted. What iv his words? “Whenever you are " naking a weak attack, never do- 1 scend to detail. So loop; as you 1 ■keep to ‘old wheezes, platitude attei ‘platitude, etc., you are on sail ‘(around, hut directly you quote «n ‘example you are in trouhle.” Mr silt is again quite appallingly wrong, j. ncidentally, no ‘‘wu i attack "•' 1 j node on him: he was quite fairly re-, erred to in kindly criticism, and itl vas properly remarked that “an oeea-1 ‘sional rather careless statement was, ( ■put forth (hy him) such as that re- ] ‘garding t’ue taxation per head twenty •years ago and the taxation per head “at this time, though as the fact that “the population has about trebled in “that period was quite overlooked by “the speaker in making the eompan-j “son, it carried no particular weight.”] Further we meant exactly what "e, said, and our readers as normal intel-j ligent human beings do hot require any! explanation of the plain words written above. But for Mr isitt’s edifica-, tion we will endeavor to elaborate the point. It is perfectly plain that in any country, be its population great or small, certain public services are requisite and certain revenue is required to pay for such services. Ihe revenue required must he obtained, iu the main, iu one of two ways —hy taxation or by borrowing. It is also undoubted that up to a certain point the administrative cost of many pnh-J lie services becomes proportionately less per head with an increase of population. and if therefore less, taxation per head is required by the Government iu power to pay its way this per capita decrease must, to a large extent, he due to an increase of population. Mr Jsitt iu effect stated that the taxation per capita when the Ballance Government took office,'on that portion of the national debt which was non-interest-hearing, was £1 2s, the total public debt then being fortyone millions. When the Libera!

Party went out of office the total debt stood at eighty-one millions, on which the taxation per capita, in respect of the non-interest hearing portion was 18s 6d. By inference Mr Isi tt led his audience to Believe—or

attempted so to do—-that the redne-

tion of the amount of interest payable per capita on the non-interest-bearing portion of the national debt was due,, to the Liberal Cavern meat having reduced the proportion of non-interest-bearing loan moneys' during its term of office; whereas the true explanation iCthat the deduction 'is almost entirelv due to 'the increase o!

population for which 'no special credit can fairly be t-laiWed by either party. Had Mr Tsitt not intended to mislead his audience he might have told then that the amount of non-interest bear-

ins; loan money was considerably greater when the Liberal Government went out of office than it was in 1801 and that it was only thd increase of population, which iie omitted to mention, 1 that made the amount payable per capita less now than in. 1891, Thete is therefore’ absolutely nothing to sit up and crow about in the fret that 1 taxation per head in respect of the non-interest-hearing portion of our national debt is less to-day than it was twenty years ago. That is why we termed Mr Tsitt’s statement a careless' one: it is either that or worse.