The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1836, 12 April 1884, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1884

Equal and exact justice to all men, Of whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political. Here shall the Press the People's right maintain Unawcd by influence and unbribed by cam

On the fourth page of this issue will be found a paper on the revised railway tariff, from the pen of Mi Samuel Vaile. We commend this paper to the attention of the farming community of Waikato. It is not necessary to touch Mr Yaile's figures in this column; the whole argument is stated in the clearest way, and calls for no explanation. But we cannot too pointedly draw attention to the conclusion flowing from Mr Yaile's statement, which is that the recent alteration in the railway tariff, as we have already maintained, (ends to further handicap the farmer, while other classes of the community are not prejudiced. The railways, which should have been, and wore intended to be a help to the pioneers of settlement, have been converted into an instru ment to tax them to the utmost limit. This is a plain fact, and no amount of argument can obscure it. Agricultiwe, as a factor in the political world, is weak — a condition owing to the want of cohesion in the units which go to make up the whole, or, in other words, to the absence of "co-operation." Knowing this, and not knowing Major Atkinson to be honest, the natural inference would be that the revision was a deliberate piece of class administration, a crushing of the politically feeble in order to propitiate the politically strong. We are not prepared to go the length of imputing such a motive to the Government ; we prefer to think with Mr Yaile, that the "revision" of the tariff is the outcome of official incompetence and Ministerial carelessness. The Treasurer stoutly defends the new tariff, and though his arguments are plausible, his defence is one of the woust features in the ease. However little he may have known of the system by which the officers of the Raihvay Department managed to raise the revenue, he cannot now plead ignorance on the subject. Major Atkinson should have been ingenuous, and stated frankly that he was in want of money and had to get it somewhere, and that Mr Mitchelson had clapped an extra impost on grain and agricultural produce as the easiest way of " raising the wind." It is simply adding insult to injury to tell us that the new tariff is a fair and reasonable one But however this may be, the duty of country settlers is to protest in the most unmistakeable manner against the injustice of compelling them to pay towards the revenue in a greater proportion than the dwellers in large centres of population. If it be that the influence of the latter is powerful enough to secure their exemption from paying certain kinds of taxes, it is about time the country people began to make common cause.