A NATION WITHOUT TAXES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 19 January 1927, Page 6

A NATION WITHOUT TAXES.

ANDORRAN REPUBLIC. A RACE OF SMUGGLERS. T;i the harassed New Zealand taxpayer one might sing: “There’s a Land Ear Away,” and refer him to the Republic: of Andorra, which is the smallest republic on earth, and wherein there 1 wells not a solitary tax collector, nor <s seen '.Tom one year’s end to another that aohonent thing, an income tax return, form. Perhaps they don’t need to lax the Andorran because he lias no expensive Houses of Parliament to maintain, no Ministers of the Crown to pay fat salaries to. mo members of Parliament. to draw £SOO a year each, with “perks” and free passes, no costly Departments of Land, Agriculture, Mines, Industry, Railways. Telegraphs and what-not to crowd with salaried officers. Yet Andorra is not entirely without Government; it has a Presid nt. who receivers a salary of £3 a year, and he has twenty-four fuithfu 1 ami diligent- councillors, who consider themselves sufficiently remunerated at los per annum. They have no overtime to work, for anything in the way of a written code of law has not been compiled. They (fortunate folk!") have no Dus legn'ations, they have no by-laws against stray dogs, and they can build fowl houses in their backyards without having to apply in writing to a local an I hority. If you want to got to Andorra- you must go either to France or Spain and climb up the Central Pyrenees between the two countries. You will, find there the oldest republic in the world,

with a charter of independence dating back ten centuries before Washington drew up his famous Declaration as if it were something new; and you will move among some 6(XX) people who live by raising sheep and cattle and by cultivating every cultivable inch of soil in the low arable acres of tlieir 160 square miles. They till with the same sort of plough as turned the soil in the days of the Romans. The visitor will bo wise not to try and introduce the inconvoninoes of civilisation —or what he regards as civilisation. People who have gone thc r and tried to introduce new ideas or open up Andorra- to the outside world have been chased jgnominiously across the frontiers. The chief industry of the Andorras is smuggling, to which they are trained from earliest, youth, only graduating among the elite of the art after years of patient application and study. They grow fine tobacco in Andorra, and steal ;t over the border into France and Spain. The young Andorra smuggler has no fast motor to clash past the frontier guards with. He is trained to the carrying of heavy ’toads over rough and winding mountain tracks on the darkest nights; ho is a® sure of his wav in mist and fog as on the clearest day. and can easily steal past the insufficient guards on the Spanish fronti. r. And. in any case, the poorly par'd Spanish guard® may easily be blinded bv silver spectacles.

The Andorran girls are pretty. They have long skirts, though—so constructed with linings that they van carry quite a lot of choice tobacco leaf. They frequently give ‘‘the Had • ye” to the frontier guards, and slip unchallenged across the border. This is only one of the nmnv wiles of this race of smugglers. The -story is told of an .Andorran who limped painfully while carry-

ing the carcase or a sheep into Spain. One of the frontier guards took pity l on him, and carried his lead a mile downhill for him. He did nor. know that the inside of the animal was filed with tobacco. The Andorra® are a happy race No taxes, no troubles! They rejoice in the simple life. They don’t want civilisation, for they know that civilisation means taxation. 'Pile happy lot of Andorrans may well be envied by New Zealanders, who are so heavily taxed that very few of them can save enough to pay passage to Andorra and escape their worries. The Andorran smuggler can evade the frontier guards; hut the New Zealander cannot escajte the tax collector. One regrets that Air Coates did not pay an official visit to Andorra before leaving for home.- He might have, discovered there a method by which he could reduce the burdens of his fellow-citizens upon bis return.