Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1895. FISCAL REFORM.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 38, 13 August 1895, Page 2

Evening Post. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1895. FISCAL REFORM.

* Wi are no great believers in or admirers of Political Leagues, or Associations. They generally fizzle out without doing mnoh good or exeroising any appreciable effoet on pnblio opinion. Their policy is usually too diffuse, and their platform composed of too many planks. Interests become divided, and efforts are weakened. Some oling to one plank and some to another. Disintegra. ■ tion follows. To prove Buooessful a Political League or Association Bhould have one paramount purpose— one overruling Srinoiple to advocate and advance, 'hen, if the objeot be one calculated to excite and sustain enthusiasm, the League or Association may prove of value in attaining it. The Anti-Corn Law League succeeded with its one purpose whon the Chartists failed with their nine-plank platform. There is room for a really effective League in this colony at the present time, and we should dearly like to Bee it established—it ib a Fiscal Reform League; and' it need have but a single plank. Its objeots should be Bummed up as follows;— To obtain the abolition of all Customs duties on the necessaries of life and labour or for Protective purposes, and to make good the necessary revenue— lst, by a reasonable increase in the Land Tax,

and abolition of all tho eiemptions ; 2nd, by an equitable tax on all incomos and earning^, fcuoh should bo t'uo simple faith of the Fiscal Reform League Other reforms, suoh as redaction m tbe cost of administrative government, would follow as a neoossary corollary to the attainment of the deaired alteration in the incidence of taxation. There should be a branoh of the League in every oentre of population in the colony, and its creed should be promulgated orally on tho platform and in privato conversation, as well as through tho press. All other politioal. or personal considerations should be subordinated to tho one great object in determining the use of the franchise by members, and the necessity for fiscal reform in the direction of Freetrade and direct taxation should bo insisted on in season and out of season. The general pnblio oould soon be roused to keen appreoiation of tbe justice of the causa and of the benefits which must acoruo to the mass of tho people by the adoption of snob a polioy. The members of the Leagne and those in sympathy with its objeots would form the true Liberal Party, and wonld, we are confident, soon triumph. How tho country would boom under snoh a polioy ! Enterprise wonld be encouraged, employment would be plentiful, land settlement would progress by leaps and bounds, trade would be revivified, and the un. employed difficulty wonld settle itself. Men with families to support would then no longer be ground down by the weighb of taxation in proportion to the number of mouths they had to find bread for. All would contribute fairly aud equitably in proportion to their means to the support of the State, and, greatest advantage of all, every contributor would know exactly what proportion of his earnings or income was absorbed in the oost of administration. This knowledge would Buffice to establish a very oritical supervision of the expenditure on government. With the coat of living reduoed to a minimum, New Zealand would soon bask in the sunshine of gennine and assured prosperity. It oan never hope to do bo while its finance is founded on tho present unsound and unjust basis of Tariff taxation.