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Manawatu Herald, Volume I, Issue 81, 10 June 1879, Page 2

Messrs Thynne, Linton & Co., will hold a sale of fruit trees tomorrow. Gold.— The New Zealander of Satnrday. states that a man had arrived in Welling* ton with several ounces of alluvial gold from one of the up districts. The locality is not stated. A Suggestive Circumstance. — Aii undertaker advances the novel theory that the steady decrease in deaths which has been for some time noticed throughout England is due to the hard times. There is more force in this than tit first appears, since ; people are now compelled by force of circumstances io indulge in fewer luxuries, and live upon rational Jiet. The Government Policy. — In a semiofficial article on Saturday, evening, 'the Wanganui Herald argues in favour 6{ a graduated land tax. It points out that instead of doubling the present Jd. tax, it would be better to " fix a progressive scale of taxation, which would with equal certainty produce the same amount for tbe current year, and which, although it would ' tend to raise the gross return of the following year, would proportionately be. product*"" ive of more than compensating advantages in another direction." Our contemporary says : — " We should like to see the tax graduated in a steadily ascending scale of 1000 acres upwards. The man who keeps 20,000 or 30,000 acres of land in his own possession, to the exclusion of population and settlement, certainly owes the State some compensation for what it loses through his monopoly. . . . The same principle that justifies the exemption by the present Act of all properties under the valuo of £500 certainly, in a logical sense, will justify the regulation of the tax so as to discourage in every possible way the accumulation in the hands of any one iudividual of more land than he can or does profitably occupy. The State is, we think, entitled to demaud an occupation of its lands which shall be profitable to the public