The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1566.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume I, Issue 181, 3 October 1866, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1566.

The representatives of the people have shown little disinclination to assist the Government in their efforts to increase the burdens of the taxpaying portion of the community. The thin end of the wedge of taxation lias been introduced, and unless the people scan narrowly the character of the men they select to represent them, other taxes will follow in rapid succession, till the burden becomes intolerable and the country not worth living in. j Taxes follow in such swift succession, that j ones breath h fairly taken away in consider- | ing them. The stamp duties are carried by the Auckland phalanx, and the members of the Northern Island, assisted by those of Nelson. A revision of the tariff, another ] name for increased taxation, which deceives nobody, will prove equally vexatious and oppressive. Then comes the newspaper tax. which is probably the most objectionable and annoying of the three, as it will fall ultimately, not. on the newspaper proprietors, so much as on the poorer class of readers, who must, either submit to the impost or be deprived of a great source of happiness and means of intellectual improvement. The supposition that, any great number of persons will pay 3d. in addition to the cost, of the paper, 10 be permitted to send it to England, via Panama, is absurd, and none hut the wealthy classes will pay the increased amount. That the provincial and intercolonial tax will also act. as a restriction and prohibition with a great many, there cannot be the slightest doubt. We repeat, the pooler portion of the community will be the chief sufferers, at. the same time the newspaper proprietors will not remain unscathed. Two powerful arguments may be used against, the fettering of the influence of newspapers by the proposed tax, viz., the great amount ol work they do gratuitously for the Government, ami the powerful influence- they exert in the education of the people. If the information diffused in reference to the acts of Government were confined to the few advertisements for which the Government pays, but a small portion of its acts :<nd requirements would bo made known to the people. The acts of the Government are limited to the Gazettes which circulate only amongst the officials and are seen but by few of general community. To the newspapers the public look for reports of the Parliamentary debates; information respecting the passing of all new laws which are enforced by pains and penalties whether the people understand them or not ; reports of trials in all criminal cases, as well as the earliest intelligence respecting the deeds, escape or arrest of great offendeis ; and comments on a thousand passing events in which the Government as well as the people are deeply interested, and but for which the greatest ignorance would obtain respecting the nets of the Government. Newspapers are the principal agents in making the people of the oilier colonies and countries acquainted with the political, social and moral status of our own. In proportion as they are efficiently conducted and widely circulated, they are the most powerful known means of informing the world at large of the advantages the colony offers to immigrants; of correcting misrepresentations that gra made respecting it at a distance ; and of sustaining its credit when assailed by the breath of calumny or depressed by untoward accidents. Anything, therefore, that checks the activity and represses the energy of such agents, cannot fail to be highly prejudicial to the colouial prosperity. The claim newspapers have on the consideration of the Government rests as much on the social advantages they secure as on the gratuitous work they do for the Government. Thousands in the colonies hold regular communication with their friends at home through the medium of the newspaper. Many who have neither ability nor time to write a letter, keep up the intercourse by means of the monthly journal. The father separated from the child, the husband from the wife, '

and the friend severed from the long absent friend, all manage to reciprocate good •wishes and interchange 'affectionate lemembrances, as much by the journals which represent the scenes of the life in which they move, as by the epistolary correspondence which supposes leisure mid ability to employ. Of newspapers, as of letters, it may be said they Speed the soft intprcourse from soul to soul, And wart a sigh from Indus to the pole. It strikes us that the tax on newspapers is a retrogressive act unworthy of an enlightened Government. It is an attempt to lay restrictions on a powerful educational agency, which is doing the work of he Government in a way they would be utterly powerless to to do themselves. To obtain a paltry £10,000 on such terms and at such a cost of useful material, is a- most questionable and unenlightened act. Of cour=e the Government, are not alone to blame in enforcing the restrictive measure. They are supported in the act by a number of small minded representatives not capable of standing the teat of public criticism, and who imagine that by diminishing the influence of the public journals, they will enjoy the paltry luxury of revenge for real or imaginary wrongs which may have been inflicted on them. Any attempt to diminish the influence of the press, however, will ultimately recoil on the authors of the narrow policy, for if the colony sinks tlicv will be involved in its destruction.