MATTERS POLITICAL.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 127, 27 November 1896, Page 2

MATTERS POLITICAL.

TO THE EDITOR Sib, — The following quotation from a speech made in the House last session by one of the Great Liberal Party will be of interest to everyone who owns from a quarter of an acre to 200 acres of land. " I think the Government should abolish all exemptions from the land tax. There is no <?.oubt that the late Mr Ballance only made the exemption to pet the country vote for the Liberal party; that was undoubtedly the case, and not because of any abstract right of exemption, but as a political expedient." If the above is true, which I believe to be, then it shows to what low depths of political trickery the Great Liberal Party will resort to dish their opponents. If every freeholder will weigh well the above as well as the following when he votes, then I am sore he will strike oat the name Mr W. A. L. Bailey— Mr Seddon's nominee. The Minister of Lands once told his constituents : — " That the State shonld as quickly as possible become the sole owner of all the land in New Zealand, and that his policy would be specially directed towards that end." Mr McKenzie, as we know, has persistently attacked the freehold. In the Horowhenua Block numbers of freehold titles have been ruthlessly swept away by Mr McKenzie and his subservient followers in the last session of Parliament. Mr McKenzie has spent £1,392,328 on land during the last two or three years, and that without the control of Parliament, who are supposed to represent the people. The people are deliberately fooled. But some poor hoodwinked voter will Bay " Oh 1 but McKenzie has spent the money well. The land is paying good, interest." Here is the tni th. The State has bought 4,000,000 acres of Native; lands, and there is not an acre of it settled. In other words we taxpayershave to pay about ±35,000 every year as interest to the London money lenders for the amount sunk on the Native lands, and yet we do not receive one penny benefit I am, &c., Geobge Wilks.