TAX ON BACHELORS.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1192, 10 July 1874, Page 4

TAX ON BACHELORS.

[westpout evening star.]

The proposal lately made by the Auckland Provincial Council to levy an educational tax on bachelors found little favor iu the Province, and apparently meets with no favorable comment elsewhere. The Melbourne Age thus descants on the subject:— " A singular statement comes to us from New Zealand. It is to the cfFoct that the Auckland Provincial Council has unanimously decided to impose au educational tax of £1 annually on all bachelors. If this had been an item of American news, it would have excited no surprise, for our American cousins are given to extravagances of this character, and are proud of the mental originality which creates them. But, that a sober-minded British community should impose a tax for educating children upon young men is an advanced step in social science that is suggestive of some more terrible mandate to follow. Our own statistics prove that marriages are on the decrease in this colony, and it may be inferred that the Auckland Provincial Council is based upon a similar disinclination on the part of the New Zealand bachelorhood to accept marital responsibilities. Here, however, local circumstances are not precisely the same as in New Zealand. Here there is a wide field of choice, ranging from the fashionable portion of Collins street to the sewing-machine room ; and although this embraces young women of all ages, nationalities, and creeds, the antecedents ofcvcrv class are generally respectable. Tn New Zealand, on the other hand, population especially the female section of it, is getting very mixed ; and although the old identity may be regarded as sans reproche the new iniquity, consisting of penitent Magdalens and the female refuse of English and Irish workhouses, are scarcely to be regarded as desirable males for New Zealand bachelors of unblemished virtue. But the pi'oposed tax on unmarried men for the purpose of educating the rising generation admits of an infer cuco eminently damaging to the character of Now Zealand bachelors. They may reasonably ask why they should be cpocially called upon to pay for the educa* ion of other people's offspring, when if they were in a position to pay for that of their own they would not be bachelors at ail. We might understand an income tax for educational purposes, for the reason that men who are receiving large incomes in the colony owe some obligation to those who assisted them to make it and that an easy way of repayment would bo by assisting to improve the educational status of the young. But to tax the bachelors of a country ostensibly because they are bachelors, aud many of them compulsorily so, through want of means to marry, seems the very essence of absurdity. It would bo far more reasonable to tax all married persons because it is a fair presumption that the majority of them have children to educate, and may thus be expected to contribute to that end someting to the State fund. But taxes of this character, by whatever name they may bo called, are not conceived in the spirit of true statemauship. This absurd decision mnx, no doubt, be traced to somo crotchety member of the Auckland Provincial Council, who has ventilated it so frequently that at last it has inoculated his brother councillors. To whatever it may bt due, it rejects no credit to its author. It encourages the view that women are not only a preponderating element in Auckland society, but that, either their charms or their characters are so Jar below par that men will not >

marry them, and that as a punishment for their contumacy, the bachelors of the Proviuce are, upon a false plea, to be mulcted in one pound per annum. The bachelors of Auckland may perhaps consider that they escape marital bondage at a low figure, but the smallnoss of the penalty also implies that the Auckland Provincial Council hold the women of that Proviuce at a very cheap value."