THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1892. GRADUATED TAXATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2314, 4 February 1892, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1892. GRADUATED TAXATION.

We will not allow it to be said that in contending, as wc were recently, for the permanent adoption into our financial system of the principle of graduated taxation, we are setting the masses against the classes. We may have our own opinion upon the abstract proposition, but the present is not the case that calls for it. There are no classes interested in resisting the new system. The persons on whom the real weight of the graduated

taxation falls—and on whom in our judgment it ought to fall—number some twenty or thirty individuals and a few companies, the interest of whose individual members in the tax is infinitesimally small. htit we are doing is to assist the interest of the whole colony of New Zealand—the legitimate interest, let us add—against the illegitimate claims of those twenty or thirty people. As thus, the point which the Opposition journals put forward with a wearisome iterration on behalf of their twenty or thirty clients —a defence, let us note carefully disguised under an affected concern for the interests of the small landowner —is that of the cruel injustice of singling them out for special taxation. “ They bought the land, no doubt, it is pleaded, at a small price compared to its present value, but it was the price which it then commanded in the general market, and it is not fair to rob them of the results of their own industry and self-denial.” This is the point We find it brought up time after time in such papers as the Tress or the Herald. It is never developed as one would fancy such a point ought to be. It is usually worked in with other matter, and thus left to distil its falsehood the more surely. We will examine it.

Is it true ? Does it include the whole facts to say that the large holders bought their land at the price it was then worth in the market ? What if the real truth is that that price was fixed low by law—that it governed the whole pasture land and practically the whole agricultural land of New Zealand—that the price was so fixed as to give the licensees of the pasture the almost exclusive chance of becoming the absolute owners —that if anyone outside their own charmed circle, the cockatoo as he was called, did succeed in acquiring a few hundred or a few thousand acres, the law was so twisted (we will come to this directly) and he himself put under a social ban so complete, as to compel him, it he had not nerves of iron, to abandon the struggle—and that the persons by whom the laws were thus made and thus worked were the very licensees of whom we are now told that it is unjust to tax them in proportion to the wealth which by these means they have acquired ? What if all this better represents the underlying facts of the case than the smooth sentences to which we are treated about “ purchasing land at its market value ? ”

We are saying a good deal, but it is soon made out. We shall give two illustrations only—the pre-emptive-rio-ht system, and the cattle trespass laws. The pre-emptive-right system, as some of us are old enough to remember, finally grew to a head at which it had to be put, an end to for very shame. It ■; almost literal truth to say that if 18 out a wire around his run, a license.. he ld tQ be ail that wire v,-. , vegt ‘ improvement anu es him with a preferential over all other persons desirous to purchase. This was at length given up, but not, we think, until those who were in the secret had secured thoir freeholds. It was not an abuse—it was a natural growth. The system of pre-emptive rights was unsound at bottom. It was said, How can you expect a mere licensee to make expensive improvements —erect a homestead, for instance—unless you give him security? Certainly not, we reply. But let him do as everybody else has to do : buy the land first, and then put his improvements on it. It is not as if it were neceesaary for him to buy the whole run. If what he wants is a homestead, let him buy sufficient for his homestead. Why is he alone to be allowed to postpone cash payment, to suit ids own convenience, Avhile others are standing by ready to give their money down ? But at the time their laws were made the liceiifises, and those whose interests ran with their own were practically supreme. Then, again, as to cattle trespass. The old law, not made so by any modern Act of Parliament, but the old common law of the Mother Country, always was, as it is there still that every occupier was bound to prevent his sheep or other cattle front trespassing on his neighbor’s i f x.7’" neighbor is not bound to them in. He may *"Vpv J* pleases, either by fencing or by the employment of hands, but do it he must, at the peril of damages to his neighbor if be fails. But that law was soon abolished in Canterbury, and it is not now the law of New' Zealand. By an ingenuity of insolence the law here is exactly reversed. If the freeholder’s sheep trespass on the licensee’s pastures the licensee recovers damages for the trespass, and driving fees as well. We say nothing about the poundage fees, which go elsewhere. But if the licensee’s sheep trespass on the freeholder’s land, the freeholdei, unless he has been at the expense of fencing them out according to strett requirements of the fencing ordinance, has no redress. et the theory is supposed to be that the licensee is only the temporary occupant until the farmer comes in. Who made this law ?