The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, JULY 20, 1893. MORE TAXES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6813, 20 July 1893, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, JULY 20, 1893. MORE TAXES.

" The best Government thi3 colony has ever had," is the opinion that has been ex-

pressed in various quarters throughout the colony -upon the peculiarly unhappy family now holding , office for dear life. Wβ do not know any reason for this extraordinary opinion, but that it is firmly entertained by the bulk of tho working , classes, especially in the cities, ia undeniable. Judged by

their actions, the Government do not deserve tho confidenoe of the people. Their policy ia a ridiculous sham, and their sickly and sentimental professions bear no relation to their notions. They boast of a "selfreliant polioy," a plume plucked from tho corpse of a previous Minister —Frederick Weld; they claim to havo adopted a " nonborrowing policy," pioked from the grave of Sir Harry Atkinson. And neither self- , reliance, nor abstention from the pawnshop, has marked their policy for a moment. A policy of empty phrases ; a policy of bombast; a policy to buy the support needed to keep them in their highly paid offices, such is the policy of Ministers. As was said of the Pharisees of old, " they bind heavy burdens and grievous to bo borne, and lay them on men's shoulders ;" " but all their works they do for to be seen of men; " they " love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogue?, and greotinga in the markets, and to be oalled of men, Rabbi, Rabbi! " Tb.6 burdeiia they have laid oa *he people are, indeed, griovous t'Jjr e borne, and it has been done pretence that it was necessary in order to maintain a non-borrowing policy. And yet, in spite of the largely increased revenuo they obtained from extra taxation, they bavo spent in two years £804,000 of borrowed money,. > a<l have added half a million to tbe colonial debt ■within the last financial year. We would ask any sensible man whether these facts, which are set forth in the Budget, do not chow that tho policy is a delusion and a sham ? But, it may be said, this money has been spent mostly in publio works, tho colony has had the benefit of tho expenditure, and hundreds of men havo .been found employment who would have been dependent on charitable aid. Tho reply to such a contention i§ that the public wor&s which have been undertakan have only been things of shreds and patches, having nothing more comprehensive In their scheme than the employment of mon who preferred tho "Government stroke " to ordinary work. The public works so constructed are therefore non« reproductive, and oannet be brought into line with tho general railway system for a long time to coins,, and without a great

deal raore expenditure, whioh will have to C be borrowed. If Woodville had been con- o neoted with Eketahuna ;if the Hunterville B bramh line had been carried to a paying 1 point ; if the Otago Central had been d push- d forward ;in fact, if any public work o had been taken in hand and energetically ' carried out to completion, the money would d have been well spent, and quite as many c men would have been found employment. » But the object of the expenditure was not f for the benefit of the oolony, but for the 3 purchase or reward of politioal support. It l is the announced intention of the Govern- ' merit to oontinue this line of policy, and to i that end they cannot afford to loosen the ' grip they have on tho purses of the paople. ' ■&Tr Peddon, in the facetious spirit inspired by the success of his political triokeryi laughed at the idea of the poor man wanting a free breakfast-table. To ease off taxation from the necessaries of life is, accord'ng to the new Liberalism, quite an exploded idea, and we are told that working men would rather continue to pay' Customs duties on tea, sugar, tobacco, and clothing, than to embarrass the public works policy under whioh their follow croatures were being , employed. This transparent twaddle has never been seriously reflected upon by the worMng classes, or they would have repented it Had such a sentiment been uttered by the Atkinson party, there would have been a roar of resentment from the North Cape to the Bluff. With a flourish of trumpets, improvements on land have been exempted from taxation, and an extra turn of the screw is pretended to have been applied to estates above £20,000 in value This does not affect the small farmer or the struggling settler to the extent of a brass farthing, for their improvements never amounted to the taxing point, and nearly all the estates above the value of £20,000 will pay less than under the original scheme. Ai.y yet this has been put forward as a great and liberal concession to poor landowners, and that those whc can best afford to pay will have to bear the burden. But it will be seen that there is absolutely nothing in it, and that it is only another sleight-of-hand trick by these political prestidigitators. If we turn to their Labor Billa, we find the same sham and humbug running through them all. Neither tha Factory Act nor the (shop Assistants Act has brought about any improvement in the conditions of life to those chiefly affected. The old law was a better protection to factory hands than the " Liberal" measure, whilo it did not harass the employer. That it wis next door to a deadletter was the fault not of the statute but of thoso who should have seen to the application of its provisions. The Shops and Shop Assistants Act is simply an interference wilh individual liberty that has provoked a storm of disapprobation from one end of the colony to the other, and has cauecd a reduction of weekly wages by lessening the hours of labor. This h«s not been felt very much in Napier, but in large cities shopkeepers cannot afford to pay for six day?' wcrk when they only receive fivodaysund a-half. And it is from the big cities that all the hub-bub comes, and employers and employ 6s alike are at sixes and sevens over the half-holiday question. It seems, however, to be the peculiar office of the present Government to pry into, and interfere with, the concerns of private persons, an excellent example of which is given in the " Boarding end Lodging Houses Bill," introduced by Mr Seddon. It is all of a piece with the Sen-ants Registry Office Act of last session, V under which almost everybody is placed under police surveillance. Measures like these demand registration fees, and, little as they may be, it all adds to the burdens of the people. Wβ now observe that S « a Bill is in preparation providing for the issue of licenses to tobacconists. What this 19 for, or what benefit will arise from it, we cannot imagine. But a license to sell implies a license fee to pay, and thus a further bur3e% will be laid on men's shoulders. If this Government remain in power we shall not be surprised if they imposed all the worn-out devices of a Tory Administration of a century ago to raise taxes. We shall sco the shops bearing the ancient inscription, "Licensed to sell tea, tobacco, and snufO;" "licensed to pell r stamps," &o.; wo shall see the windows ti d taxed, and the carts taxed, a levy on bricks • and sawn timber, and Orders-in-Council I regulating what wo shall eat, and wherei withal we shall be clothed. It ia to this a that we have almost come under the ' doctrines of a false Liberalism, which is " as grinding in its tyranny as were the laws in the time of our forefathers, and from r which emancipation was gained by real o Liberalism.