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Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1471, 31 August 1883, Page 2

MR E. Mbheditii, ina letter to our local contemporary, has at last come to I lie front. In it he says: I am drawing no fancy picture, let anyone wall the changes that have taken place within the last two years, and answer the question to himself, if I am not stating tho bare, cruol fact, that many a worthy struggling settlor, crushed by taxation, has no sooner been overtaken by misfortune than ho has gone down before the inexorable law of cause and effect, while the wealthy man has added acre to acre, and p-ofited by \\\a ruin of his neighbor,

If this statement be true, Mr Meredith has a fair case, but we cannot for one moment admit its correctness. We bare watched the changes to which Mr Meredith alludes, but the main cause.) of them have not been taxation, Ask any business man whether the numerous failures which'have bean townand country are.primarily due to taxation, and he will, we venture to say,

reply promptly in the negative. Mr. Meredith reminds us of the London alderman who used to indulge to'excess in nine, and was accustomed to retain in his glnaa n strawberry. He was wont to attribute his inebriety not to the wine he drank, but to the strawberry, The County rale is Mr Meredith's strawberry, and he altogether ignores the more potent causes of misfortune to which so many settlers have succumbed. We challenge Mr Meredith to prove instates of settlors crushed by taxation. They have been crushed by buying land at too high rates, by paying high rates of interest, by low prices for produce, hy want of knowledge of how to farm their land; but they have not, bb far bb we are aware, heon ground down by taxation, Why is Mr Meredith, who has hitherto been a bright particular star of the utter upper class, descended from his height to stir up strife ? Is he experiencing a revival, and donning tho garb of a philanthropist, or is he patting on his war paint for the eleotion campnign of 1884!