The Press. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1879.

Press, Volume XXXI, Issue 4264, 29 March 1879, Page 4

The Press. SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1879.

OTrB readers are no strangers to our opinion of Sir George Grey. We have deemed it our duty to criticise with great severity a very large portion of hie political conduct, both before and since he became the Premier of New Zealand. In thus doing we have been careful to. enter fully into the facts before us, so that the public should have every opportunity of judging between ourselves and the object of onr condemnation. Por some time past the mode of our treatment has so far varied that we have addressed ourselves not so much to expressing our own views of his delinquencies as to considering what was said about him by others—friends or enemies, as the case might be—who -• were equally interested with us in the formation of an accurate opinion about him. The post sessional utterances of the various leading members of the Legislature furnished apt opportunities for this course. And our readers are well aware, from what has already appeared in these columns on this head, that the opinions cited have borne out our censures in an extraordinary degree. Where we have denounced they have deplored. Where we have spoken of him as never worthy of political confidence, they have lamented that the trust that they had hitherto reposed in him must for the future be wholly withdrawn. Where we have laid bare the discreditable motives which have led to the withdrawal by Sir George Grey of this or that important measure, they have declared with every evidence of real sorrow their inability to discover any justifiable reason for his not going forward with those same measures. When we have ventured upon deeper questions, and challenged the course taken by him— in advising, for instance, the Governor to veto a Bill passed by both Houses upon the recommendation of his own Ministry, as a direct breach of our constitutional liberties—a discreet silence has been the only reply. The -evidence has been gradually thickening' around us that the public have come over pretty much to our view of the matter. It is not merely here or there, or by one or two individuals, that the line we are remarking upon has been taken. It may be asserted generally that there is no leading statesman who has addressed a public audience since the close of the session who has not made it the main point of his speech, that Sir George Grey personally {has given tbe gravest cause of d_satisfaction to all those whom he bad persuaded to confide in his promises. And it has been publicly declared upon authority that none will question that the members of his late party will go back to Wellington discharged of all their pledges in his favor. Ho is made, in fact, the political outlaw which we have long declared him to be. At the same time, wo were not prepared for the outburst of suppressed indignation which appeared in our yesterday's coin—no. Th„i!_e it is not uuroeivea, it is not the friends or the enemies of Sir George Grey who aro the speakers. What we hoar now is the voice of his own colleagues. The Wellington Chronicle is well known as the organ of the Ministry, taking the Ministry we mean as something different from Sir George Grey personally. It was not to be expected, of course, that a paper thus circumstanced would hold itself out as an opponent of Sir G. Grey. But we are now told that the " time for " reticence is past. . . . When " trouble was impending Sir G. Grey de- " parted for Kawau. He has ever " since been there . . . wasting " hia time at a period of grave "danger." Had he "any adequate notion " of the duties of his office he would have " been in Wellington assisting Mr. " Sheehan to grapple with the Native " difficulties. ... The plain fact " is, and there is no use in denying it in " any way, Sir George Grey fled from " his post like a coward at the very time " when he was most needed, and ho did " this traitorous action advisedly. He " was fully aware of the impending " danger, and he fled to tho North in "order that the whole responsibility of " the Native difficulty might be thrown "on his colleagues. Sir George Grey " B*_nds utterly aloof at this momentous " crisis. He will give no assistance to " the Ministry of which he is the respon- " siblo head, but leaves them to take their " own conrse unaided. . . . We " Warn the Premier that the country " will not stand his conduct much longer." After this it is not necessary for us to say more. Over and over again in these columns Sir George Grey has been accused, in the course of his political career, of faults inconsistent with the position of an English statesman and an English gentleman; but it has been reserved for the organ of his own Cabinet to gibbet him before _the country as a political coward. ♦ We have several times taken occasion to express our views about the land tax, and we have freely accepted beforehand the responsibility of predicting its failure. Remembering that it was established to fill np the gap loft by the reduction of the Customs duties, and remembering that that reduction was entirely uncalled for, we have felt at liberty to criticise its provisions far more freely than we should have been disposed to do had the measure, however unpleasant, been a necessity. But the whole financial scheme of the Ministry wa3 simply a gigantic piece of incompetence. They showed their ignorance of the true principles of taxation by the Mud of reduction which they made in the Customs duties: they showed their incompetence to devise a satisfactory basis of taxation by the arrangements which they proposed in connection with the land tax. They may probably have succeeded in injuring those whom they designed to injure, but they certainly have not succeeded in benefitting those whom they professed to be anxious to bless. The Canterbury land holders more particularly are likely to have to pay enormously beyond the amount which will get into the Treasury, but the poor man's breakfast table will not have cost him a shilling less, at the end of the year than it did before the duties on tea and .sugar were reduced. And it was not that tho Government were without the usual sources of correct in- j

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formation when they decided upon their financial scheme. They not only had all the help that is always obMnable from the permanent official staff, but judging from the speeches in the debate, they appeared to ' have taken some pains to get up the principles laid down by the most eminent writers upon those subjects. But unluckily they eeem to have beenincompetent to understand their materials when they got them. They read their Adam Smiths and their Ricardos, but when they did so they were reading what to them, was an unknown tongue. Had their minds been familiar with discussions of this sort they would have known that generally speaking nothing is so ineffectual as a mere reduction of a. Customs duty. It increases, of course, to the revenue the proportionate coat of collection, inasmuch that the departmental expenditure continues as before, and it increases to the consumer the proportionate cost of his purchase, the retailer with whom he deals making him no allowance. It can only be defended as an interim stop, and as such the validity of tha defence must of course depend upon the truth of the grounds stated—grounds which in the instance before ns, we have seen to be so signally falsified by the results. And. again, if the Ministerial exponents of the new financial policy had studied their writers on Political Economy with a view of ascertain*—g tUe truth, and not to bolster up a : foregone conclusion, they would have seen that nothing can be further from the views of the leading authorities than io recommond such a-land tax as we are now blessed with. In both aspects of thoir policy they havo shown their inability to deal with the problems before them.

And the misery of it is that had they only been contented to accept a common sense view of the matter, this oppressive tax would have been wholly unnecessary. They might, if they were bent upon it, have adhered to their reduction of the customs duties, and they might have done so without necessitating the imposition of this tax. It ia true such, a course would have left a gap in their ways and means, but they might have avbided the necessity of filling it np by creating a corresponding gap in the estimates., And this, there would have been no difficulty in their doing. It was even strongly urged upon them during the debate. The system of subsidies is condemned generally. Their stoppage is only a question of time, and the Government would never have done a wiser thing than if they had taken the opportunity last session to put an end to them. They would have got rid of an expedient which is admittedly contrary to all sound principle, and works mischievously in practice. Instead of attempting to achieve this result, they went out of their way to invent a new kind of taxation, which has no one just quality.to recommend it. It is expensive—unprecedentedly expensive—in collection; it brings in proportionately little to the Treasury ; it is both partial and capricious -in its incidence, and it is affected more largely than any other known tax with the viciousness of confiscation.

We have been led into these remarks by the accounts which reach us from all parts of the colony of the breaking down of the land tax. It is now confessed on all hands to be a failure. The expense of its collection is already something enormous, and this before one penny of the tax has actually boon collected. It is obvious that this expense is by no means a necessary incident to the collection of a Livid tiL-r _—si—n-Afl movoly 88 HUCh. If the land had been taxed like all other property—just as it stands—the existing Road Board and Municipal valuations would probably have answered every purpose necessary to its collection; and the whole army of valuators recently raised, with the diflicult and therefore expensive duties imposed upon them, would have been dispensed with. It would have been cheaper to have taxed the land with its improvements at the existing rateable value—and we need not say it would have been far more productive—than it has been to provide for the proper calculation of an endless series of deductions in order to ascertain the tax leviable upon a hypothetical result. The tax as it stands, can, it is evident, not continue to be levied. That some tax of the kind will, however, be required, at all events at an early period, we fear must he acknowledged. Its necessity is greatly expedited by the huge blunder made by the Government last session in throwing away, to no purpose, more than £100,000 a year of Customs revenue, ft might have been delayed had they decided to put an end to the subsidies. But with the impending deficit in the land fund, exaggerated as it is by the new policy and the increasing demands of onr Government, it is impossible to conceal from ourselves that some additional taxation must soon be resorted to. The country will be quite prepared to submit to a just land tax, just as it will to a fair property and income tax. > But) what we do ask is that the tax, whatever it be, shall be an equitable one. Do not let ns have a series of unmeaning exemptions on one side, and of fancy valuations on the other. Let whatever values have to be acted upon, be arrived at by machinery to which we are accustomed, and the results of which we understand. Let all alike share in the burden, and under these conditions the tax will be willingly submitted to if the necessities of the country demand its imposition.