ABSENTEEISM.

Waikato Times, Volume XI, Issue 869, 15 January 1878, Page 3

ABSENTEEISM.

Sib,— The following w a copy of a letter ) I received the other day:—" Could Mr Green kindly supply us with an account of any improvements he may have made m the way of building, fencing, ploughing, draining, or laying down m "grass, sin-ie last valuation? — Poxbb & Pbt, Valuers." In any other country than this, the foregoing would pass for an impertinence on the part of the sender, and the receiver would very probably pass for a fool should he answerit, save by requesting the enquirers to mind their own bu4inesß. But here it is the law of the land, and has to be complied with m every particular, under pain of something short of capital punishment. Every occupier of land m this district, where there are so many absentee owners of property, must find the present Rating Act a most unfair and one-sided arrangement, taxing as it does the hard-working improver of land, and letting off nearly scott free the absentee speculator. The Government that can make such a law, and the people who can tacitly allow the justice of it by cheerfully paving taxes on their own improvements, must pass down to posterity as one of the greatest wonders of a wonderful age. It seems that the presentMinintry are a'oout to adopt the policy of their predecessors. If so, m what pttrtioular respect are the public to be the gain 5 r3 by the change ? and, to what 4nd have the recent unseemly squabbles among our representatives tended for the publio good if it is only to be a question of another set of men to oarry out the old measures and mistakes of the late Ministry.—l am, etc., Gbbbn.