BACHELOR TAX

Northern Advocate, 21 June 1926, Page 6

BACHELOR TAX

AEREADY TOO HEAVY. “LEAVE HIM ALONE.” Sir Robert Horne, one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a hardened bachelor, has come to the rescue of the bachelor threatened once again with taxation, merely because ho .is not a Benedict. “Leave the poof bachelor alone,” is the gist of Sir Robert’s remarks. This exhortation will find a fervent echo in every bachelor’s heart. 1 * i Bachelors are already taxed more | heavily than the married couple. BeI sides, what would the girls do if all I the bachelors had their surplus iuI come soaked by the Exchequer? They would find themselves "without I escorts for dances, theatres, little dinners, all those gay and charming outings that cost the bachelor so' much hard-earned money. They would have to court the bachelor instead of having the bachelor court them. The Erec States —Irishmen are very sentimental and dearly love to urge the young people into marriage —have decided to tax the bachelor to the tune of 25 per cent of his income. Unless officials are married, they will get much less pay. Will this cause the marriage rate in romantic Ireland to shoot up? Shall we have the mulcted Irish bachelors hastily proposing to their typists and secretaries in order to get the larger rate of pay scheduled for the married? Possibly—and how unromantic! What a bad basis on which to enter the great adventure of marriage!

I They tried the same in France and ■in Turkey. In the latter country, under an autocracy they were especially severe. But the results were most disappointing. So far the marriage rate has shown no appreciable rise as a consecpience. Several of the greater English statesmen, now dead and gone, conceived the same idea for increasing the revenue i and the marriage rate at once, and put it into practice in various ingenious ways. But it never did any good and it was soon dropped. In olden time, in ancient Greece and Rome, they had periodical drives I against the bachelor. In. Sparta, the maidens at the great feast day once a year were licensed to bait any bachelor they could find, and many a wretched young man, "who was either holding off marriage or could find no I girl to take him, had a rough time. In old Athens no one could hold high army rank, or sit in Parliament, unless he were a married man with children. And in many countries the obstinate bachelor was always in danger of being dosed with frightful love potions by a witch doctor in the pay of a mother with an unmarried daughter. Civilisation gives the bachelor equal rights M;ith the married man. This is just. It is also right that bachelorhood is expensive. Modern girls are exigent in their demands. The courting bill is invariably a long .one, and if the bachelors are soaked by the State the girls are more likely to get left than wooed lavishly, and married.—“ Calcutta Statesman.’ ’ 1