THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JULY 26, 1909. TAXATION V. SETTLEMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9551, 26 July 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JULY 26, 1909. TAXATION V. SETTLEMENT.

Coming events cast their shadows bfore, and we evidently have in Dr. Findlay's attempt to popularise death duties a prelude to some scheme for additional taxation in order to make good the loss inflicted upon the Exchequer by unmistakable maladministration. If Dr. Findlay is ,to be taken seriously he regards increased diatb duties as a providential method for the "distribution of wealth" as well as for securing "revenue to the State." The Minister for Justice set himself to convince his audience at Dunedin that it was nol; so much a necessary as a laudable thing to tithe the pioperty carefully accumulated in order that widows might not come to want and that children might have a better start in life than their parents had before them. This incitement of the multitude to the plunder of those who have something to be plundered cannot be altogether to Dr. Findlay's liking, for none know better than lawyers of his training how easy it is to appeal to the baser passions of men under the cloak of humanity and how difficult it is to measure the effect. But as our Dominion's finance is in an unsatisfactory condition, thanks to (a) stoppage of land settlement, (b) wilful waste of public money upon unprofitable public ' works, and (c) gross extravagance in Departmental administration, it is necessary for Dr. Findlay, upon whose tmoulders lie the responsibilities of the Premiership, although not the robes and rewards of such office, to divert the public mind from the weakness of the Government's position, and to rally the unthinking majority for an attack upon the purses of the minority. That there has been gross extravagance in Departmental administration is proved by the retrenchments which are going on. ,Althr,ugh many Civil ser- I vants have been retired we are assured that the efficacy of the public service is in no way affected. In other words, while times were good and employment on all lines was quite easy to obtain, the Government squandered hundreds of thousands of pounds in unncessarily increasing Departments and staffs; and now I turns innocent Civil servants into the street when times are so dull and employment so scarce that even tne most economic administrator might wish to adjourn house-cleaning until Spring. And that there has been wilful waste of public money in unprofitable public works we have been told by Sir Joseph Ward himself, who acknowledges that the Otago Central has swallowed up over a million sterling without any present

hope of paying ita way; and by M r Millar, who admits that while some Northern trains do not pay whole lines in the South are a dead weight on the railway balance. As for land settlement, remarks tho "New Zealand Herald," we are constantly occupied in exposing the misleading and deceptive figures by which Dr. Findlay's political chief, Mr James Carroll, and Dr. Findlay's amateur colleague, Mr Buddo. are endeavouring to convince the public that the Crown and native lands are being opened at a "staggering" rate. We notice, too, that Dr. Findlay himself craftily quotes land settlement as the sixth and last upon the list of reme« dies for unemployment advanced by a "competent authority." But eves a schoolboy knows that although land settlement may be the sixth and last of remedies for unemployment in the England of the "competent authority" quoted by our Minister for Justice in Dunedin, it is the first and incomnarably the first in countries like New Zealand. To acimit this, however, would be to confess that our unemployed workmen, our emigrating farmers, our doubtful finances, were due to gross maladministration. Dr Findlay preters, as a struggling politician, to beat the drum of Party, and to cover all shortcomings by humanitarian phrases and a laudation of the beneficence of death duties.