The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE. Tuesday,APRIL 21,1891.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2928, 21 April 1891, Page 2

The Waikato Times AND THAMES VALLEY GAZETTE.

Tuesday,APßlL 21,1891.

Equal ami exact justice to all men, Of whatsoever state or persuasion, religious or political. ""

TltE advocates of the land tax will feel considerably elated at the turn which events have taken of late. From the utterances of the Premier and his colleagues, vague and ambiguous though they are, sufficient may be gathered to indicate that one of the earliest moves on the part of the present Government will be the abolicion of the property tax and the imposition of a purely land tax in its stead. This issue has been before the public for some time, and the advocates of a land tax are numerous, including, wu may add, soma that would scarcely have been expected to support it. The Labour Members, as they are termed, we suppose are practically pledge'! to a land tax, and taking one thing with another there seems every probability that this important change in our system of raising revenue will take place at no distant date. But the question is whether a large number of those who at present view a land tax with so much favour have thoughtfully considered the matter in all its bearings. We usually regard that form of taxation as the most just which falls heaviest on those best able to bear it. This the land tax certainly will not do. Our readers are perfectly well aware that a larg(; proportion of the land in the colony is mortgaged, some of it almost to its full value, the bulk of the money lent being held by foreign capitalists. Yet those money-lenders who run no risks throngh good or bad seasons, who till not neither do they spiu, and yet who practically speaking owu the land, are to escape scot free from any taxation whatever; and in the case of those who havs lent money since the property tax has been "in force, and who, no doubt, made provision for it in the rate of interest charged, will under its repeal be simply made a present of so much of our earnings. The risks, anxiety, and weight of taxation are to fall upon the registered owners of laud, whether held iu large or small blocks. The element of justice, which is so freely alluded to by land taxers, seems to us to be quite absent from this proposal of a land tax in lieu of a property tax. There can be no question but that the imposition of the property tax was a serious check to the. inflow of capital which would have otherwise been directed to our shores, but a land tax particularly if made of a class character will operate still more forcibly in that direction. fcfo far as the operation of the property tax within tho colony was concerned, it had the merits of being a direct tax and fell with equal justice upon all. If it favoured any, it was the small men, who up to -fioOO were exempt. Further under it, the money lender whether colonial or foreign, had to pay in proportion to the value of his interest in the colony.

Perhaps it in only naturally that the industrial classes, who are not directly interested in land, further than in small allotments, will sup, port a proposal which manifestly removes a heavy burden from their backs, to place it upon that of Komeonc else. But we would point out, even to those that any legislation whether fiscal or otherwise, which act* ub a check to the How of capital and energy to the land, is Lad, and must inevitably react upon every other branch of ilia community. Successful and widespread agriculture is the principal hope New Zealand has in coping with its financial difficulties, and to placo obstacles in its way as a land-tax will do, while relieving other branches of industry, is to our mind but a retrograde step it it crushes our greatest industry, that of agriculture;

We must, however, face the fact that the desire for a land tax springs from a hv deeper source— at least as regards fkow who style themselves advanced thiufcers ,d»d social reformers—than raorely .the wish to bring about a more ctjuit-

ililc adjustment, of tlio pnoplo's bur flcns. The object, openly avowed in many eases, is to make the individual ownership of land, whether in large or small blocks, as irksome and undesirable as possible, and these reformers fondly hope that the imposition of a land tax will be the first step towards land nationalisation, by making the possession of land so unprofitable to its present owners that the resumption of it by the State will be comparatively a cheap and simple operation. This, in other words, is confiscation by a gradual ai.rl legal process. We belie ve the effects of a land tax will be disappointing to those who honestly regard it as being an improvement in the incidence of taxation. It is the volumn, not the incidence of taxation, wherein the difficulty lies, and we must look to a reduction in our expenditure for any real relief rather than to any change in its imposition. Situated as our colony is, with vast natural resources, which only need developing to place us beyond our public difficulties, any blow levelled directly or indirectly at its prii,cipal one, agriculture, is greatly to be deplored.