TAXATION VERSUS LIBERALITY.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9817, 28 August 1897, Page 9

TAXATION VERSUS LIBERALITY.

TO THK KDITOH OP THE PKKS3.

It has become a topic of remark in Uto years as to the increasing difficulty in vetting subscriptions unci donations for benevolent schemes and for religious purr>otea. Witness our unfinished Cathedral and the fllfite of some of our local churches. The chief cause is probably to be found in the fact Ifiat the ever-iocreaeiug taxation is dryiii" tip tho source from which in times jmi<t fertilising streams ran. The State— (he modern fetish —is diverting these Btreanif into Government coffers for scores of furlmniea and projects unheard of until the la.it few years. What you take by taxation comes out of what was voluntarily given before. It is inevitable that if the taxg.ttlicrer is for ever pestering people for money that people will be forced to button up their pockets in other directions ; hence, in the face of prenont appearances, mattors niny bo expected to get worse and worse. The new fashion ie to go to the Government and ask for sums to put on the Estimates. Why not get a sum put on the Estimates for finishing our Cathedral? Canterbury finds a grfcnt (leal of the stigav that sweetens otlior people* tea and gets remarkably little itself. Wohftve plenty of things far more needed in Canterbury than private roads to Ministers' houses, or even cooked hats, em.'ol'te and special trains and steamers and »ll the other "pomps and vanities" of the Onvernment Upper Ten. It would seem that sums are required to l>o placed on tho Estimates for teaching cooking in State schools. Will this include tlio noble art of "cooking accounts" and converting deficits into surpluses ? Here is on opening for cooking and financial "expert*. If cooking is taught ac a branch of domestic economy, why not nursing also ? We (ire metaphorically di'y-nursed now ; why hot be so in actuality? Some of the new women could be made into " inspectors of nurseries" nnd "pap'cxperte." Wβ are within mensurable distance of all these things, flnrt mote to follow. "Coloniul hotcTi-potoh a Iα Seddon " would do for one ottho dlshee for the State cooking elaasoa, and knottier might be " lamb and very green tf)V'.», With bankrupt sauce." " New Zealand Communistic blended soup (of all sorts) a Iα 'all-Jones 1" and "Woolston Socialistic goose (ttowed in its oivn juice)" might; do for others. To revert, however, to the opening matter of this letter, tho point ie that if people are Unduly taxed for nil kinds of more or less loeiallelio schemes they will not end cannot bo generous or liberal in other ways. It is unreasonable to expect it. The clergy and others who depend largely on the liberality of the ptiblio for their income, and Who have socialistic tendonoies, may take warning. As all taxation increnacß co will their emoluments decrease until they " taper off" to nil. Socialists will not Infill or support churches, and Government endowments will be confined to •ulsulieing lime-light lecturers who lecture 6u oil the arts and scionoes and everything on tho earth of the water* tinder the earth fm twentj'four hout'u , previous notice.— Yoilra, k<:., FiinKY Roadster.