CORRESPONDENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 94, 18 October 1910, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

MR. WITHY AND THE LAND QUESTION. IO THE EDITOB. Sir, — As a native of this city, kindly allow me to tell Mr. A. Withy that we do not want any of his "Finsbury men of the flower-pot" brand in this young country— or in Australia, either. We have far and away too many men of that stamp already, and if we did want them we can get them in tens, and even hundreds of thousands, at any time. But these grand youn^ countries of the Southern Cross do 1 require, above everything else, maay men of the stamp of the Dukes of Northumberland and Norfolk, and of the great land-owning landlord, merchant, and capitalist classes who have made the inhabitants of the small and insignificant islands of Britain the greatest and most powerful nation on the earth at the close of the nineteenth century. , During my lifetime the population of the United Kingdom has inCreased under this system of big land-, owners, landlords, and capitalists, from 25 millions to 45 millions. But under the opposite system of State interference • and ownership in vogue in these immense lands of the Southern Hemisphere during the same period the population hag remainted stationary— at a paltry four millions. Our visitor has a great deal to say against monopolies, and so have I, But does he know that in this city of Greater Wellington, the City Council, the Government, and the Harbour Trust own a monopoly of fully one-half— and that the most valuable half — of the land and property in this city? Further, they do not pay one single farthing in rates or taxes on their huge monopolies. One result is that the rates on private land and property are greater here than in London, and we in this city have to carry on our backs a much heavier municipal debt than the city of Sydney, with' a population of 700,000. It is the greatest piece of buncombe ever preached on the lace of the globe to say that these heavy land taxes and rates fall on the big men. My long life of observation and bitter experience has taught that the big men subdivide, and self out, and the whole crushing weight of taxation falls at once on the small or poor men who are utterly unable to bear it. — I am, etc. , HEAVILY-TAXED NEW ZEALANDER. 17th October, 1910.