The Tumeka Leader SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1888. SLANDEROUS ACCUSATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1730, 28 April 1888, Page 2

The Tumeka Leader SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1888. SLANDEROUS ACCUSATION.

Omi highly respectable contemporary the Christchurch Press has for the time being given up misrepresenting facts and taken to abusing its political opponents. In its issue of the 18th instant, it characterised Protectionists and Liberals as persons who “ have an instinctive antipathy to honest, legitimate labor, and sigh after schemes for making themselves rich at the expense of others.” This is really a sweeping onslaught. The great majority of the people of this colony are both Protectionists and Liberals, and it is certainly a monstrous thing for any newspaper to characterise them as lazy rascals, who aim at enriching themselves at other people’s expense. The editor of the Press is doubtless a very good and a very industrious man; but good and honest and industrious as he may be, there are amongst Protectionists and Liberals thousands of men, who possess these virtues in a more eminent degree than he doss. The reasons which the Press gives for coming to the conclusion that Protectionists and Liberals are such great reprobates are that during last election they expressed a belief in protecting the industries of the colony, in the Land Acquisition Bill, and in

progressive taxation. If they did not believe in these things, and accepted as gospel truth the political doctrines laid down by the Press, they would doubtless be no worse than other people. The interesting point in the discussion is, what are the Press’s doetpines? No Customs duties, except for r.eyepue purposes • full liberty K)' capitalists to ! acquire large estates, i this greater part of the taxation bonui by the people at large; s*. !****** •>/ «•

pending public money on immigration; uo mercy to bo shown to tbo unemployed, because they are lazy loafers; discontinuance of Village Settlements ; and generally to play into the hands of money-rings, banks, and landsharks. With regard to taxation for revenue purposes, this is the system which has hitherto prevailed in this colony, while Victoria has taxed for Protective purposes. The result is that the people of New Zealand pay a tax of 20 per cent on the imported goods they consume while the Victorians pay only 10 per cent. The object the Press has in opposing Protection must therefore he inspired by fear that its friends the moneyrings would have to pay more taxes than they do at present, because then the people would not contribute so much through the Customs. Thus it is that the Press in its superior honesty endeavors to throw dust in the eyes of the people. With regard to the evil of large estates, we are of opinion that there are very few people who are not “ dishonest ” enough to wish to see them cut up into smaller holdings. The Laud Acquisition Bill aimed at doing this in the most honest and straightforward way that has ever been proposed. It proposed to give to the present owners full value for their land, and under such circumstances we cannot see where the charge of dishonesty comes in. Previous schemes proposed to put on large landowners a bursting-up land tax, When this proposal was before Parliament it was denounced as confiscation, but evidently, to give a fair price is just as bad, and nothing will do but to allow large landowners to remain in undisturbed possession of the whole colony. Honesty, according to the Press, is to live in idleness on the fruits of other men’s work ; dishonesty is to express dissatisfaction with such a system. '