The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1881.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4011, 5 November 1881, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1881.

The Land Tax has been fiercely denouuced in New Zealaud as being wrong in principle and vicious in practice. It Las been stated that it was a tax calculated to retard settlement, injurious to the State. unfair in its incidence, and too many other things to narrate. The Attorney General and Major Atkinson have said that there was no difference in realised wealth, and that the owner of a ship should be placed in the same position as the owner of land. According to the English theory, however, men only hold land from the Crown as tenants at will on the performance of certain imposed conditions. There is no need to enter into any serious refutations of the objections urged against the imposition of a Land Tax, as the mass of the people will not be long in discovering the position occupied by the shipowner and others, from that of the holder of land. All things come from the land. The iron of which the hull of the ship is made, the timber in its masts, the cordage by which its movements are aided, and the coal aiding to increase its speed. The schoolmaster having been abroad will enable people in the future to see things more clearly than they have seen them in the past. As Sir George Grey very tersely said, when arguing on this subject, the owner of land is the owner of men. A land tax is the rent the landholder pays to the State for its possession. Unlike the property tax.it neither diminishes the profits of the cultivator, nor increases the price of agricultural produce. It is no burden to the cultivator, nor does it impose any loss to the rest of the community. It consequently differs from all other taxes, for it possesses the great merit of obtaining a large revenue for the State, without diminishing the wealth of any producing class. The only persons who object to its incidence are the owners of land. Those oq whom the income tax falls in England make the same unheeded objection. Why its imposition is specially needed in New Zealand, is that it would render large tracts of land being kept for speculative purposes almost impossible. It would foster improv&iaeiits aud xaak^ the absentee eon- . tribute a fair proportion to the revenue of

the country, the Government of which protects his property. .Although very slow as a people to adopt new ideas, when once they have settled down into our minds we hold them with a great amount of tenacity, and insist on their being put into practice. The first thing in the tax payers catechism should be the question, "Is the land tax sufficient ? " It is astonishing to notice the difference in the rules of conduct we apply to ourselves, and that we consider applicable to other people. The land tax of England in. round numbers amounts to some million and a half sterling per annum. In India —a conquered or annexed country—it yields something like £20,000,000 yearly When we took possession of the country, we found that its petty rulers obtained their revenues from taxes on land. The Governor of India took possession of the soil and exercised the same rights towards the cultivator as our early kings exercised towards their feudatories. The English aristocracy managed to throw off their obligations to their feudal lord, and hence the land tax in England became commuted or reduced to the miserable amount it now annually yields. We want to begin here to undo what was done in England some two hundred years past. The great sin of Sir George Grey, in the mind of the landholder, is his love of a land tax as the basis of all taxation.