THE OTHER SIDE OF THE QUESTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1759, 5 July 1888, Page 4

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE QUESTION.

The editor of the Auckland Herald thus dealt with Mr Bruce'b proposal to poll-tax unmarried men: —Why should a man be taxed for the mere reason that ho has not married. ? Apart from the fact that it may not hare been his fault but his misfortune, a wife is admittedly a luxury ; and all recognised fiscal principles go to say that luxuries should be taxed, and reason far more conclusive could be shown why the married man should be called on to pay a duty for his wife. It is all right enough to say flippantly that he is taxed already, and heavily taxed, with milliners' bills and other incidental to the possession of a mistress of his household. Serve him right; he voluntarily undertook the obligation, and cannot plead ignorance of the consequences; if he will hare luxuries, he ought to pay for them. As for the bachelor, he refrained from indulging in such a luxury—leading a simple and economical life, and entailing no responsibilities, which, in the chapter of events, may become a burthen to the State, by filling the orphanages and or even the industrial schools; and the idea of taxing him while he only partook of the necessaries of life, and scrupulously avoided its luxuries, is so utterly opposed to all the principles that ordinarily regulate the imposition of fiscal burthens, tbat the proposal could only emanate from the mind of a man imbued with the tyrannical feeling arising from the thought of belonging to a dominant majority that can do as it likes. Like the fox who had got his tail cut off in a trap, these married men affect the belief that the bachelors ought for their own interest to be forced to eschew the delights of celibacy; while in their hearts they sigh for the days of boon companionship, when, with latch-key in pocket, they could come home when they pleased without the dread of being called to account where they had spent their leisure hours; and" with an affected interest in the bachelor's welfare, which is only chagrin aud spitefulness, they say that he ought to be taxed into what, with gruesome irony, they grimly call the " blissful" estate of matrimony. When we think of the special trials and snares to which unprotected men are exposed in this particular year — be ng leap year—we feel inclined to throw the »gis of our protection round them, and we denounce as cruel and unjust, and as opposed to all correct principles of fiscal economy, this proposal of the member for Uangitikei to impose a special tax on bachelors.