TAXING FOODSTUFFS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 198, 10 January 1913, Page 6

TAXING FOODSTUFFS.

• MR. BONAR LAW'S VIEWS. In his speech at the great Unionist demonstration at the Albert Hal! on November 15, Mr. Bonar Law, referring to taxes on foodstuffs, said:—"We shall not treat any revenue derived from socalled food taxes, whatever they are, which may be imposed for preference—we shall not - treat it as ordinary revenue; we shall use it to diminish the burdens which in other ways are falling upon the poorer classes of this country. (Cheers). It will not he an additional taxation; it will be a readjustment of taxation; and owing to this revenue, and owing to the expansion which I am certain will come with this change of system—l say then that instead of adding to the cost of living, the adjustment which we shall make will make the burden smaller instead of greater which falls on the working classes." Referring to colonial preference, Mr. Bonar Law said:—"We must 'be free to defend our own markets against the intervention of those who deny us access to their markets, and last, but not least, we must 'be free to meet the great dominions across the seas, to meet them half-way when they come to us, as they will come to us, asking for reciprocal trade. What we sha'il give them must to a great extent depend upon what they ask for. It must be a free bargain. Each side will no doubt think most of all of its own people, but both sides will, I hope, think of the Empire. If when that time comes the great dominions ask us to grant them in return for substantial advantages which they will be prepared to give us—if they ask us to give them a moderate duty upon foreign wheat, sufficient to bring into our markets the great imlhuited granaries of all Canada and Australia, we shall not be deterred from examining their proposal by the mere statement that it wi'd involve the taxation of food and that all food taxes are unholy things. But I well know with what jealousy any proposals of this kind arc regarded by the people of this country, and I think they have every right to ask for precise information as to the limits within which we contemplate taxation of this kind."