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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 13 September 1909, Page 2

9 It i* inbmung to pick out salient 3 * points in the speech 1 The Land Taxes, which th» "Daily Chronicle uharae--1 terises not incorrectly, it seems,, ns that fc of "a great land-lord, not of a great 8 liberal." It appears strange that the - author of that beautifully written book, '• r 'William Pitt the Younger," can speak 0 as given in the cables. It is the man 1 too, who delivered that momentous " speech at the Imperial Press Confery, erice. But tliere always seems to be a 1 screw teose sflm^-here, just a little hol- " lowness in certain pluses. It was said ot " Lord Hosebery when he pni^pd M]?hc life that hfu ambition constsfed pf three r things— to win the Derby, to mftrry an ! heiress, and to be Prime Minister of , Great Britain. He succeeded Mr GladJ stone in March, 1894, as Prime Mims- - ter and carried on with no distinction f until - defeat, in 1895. He won the Derby it» 1894-95, and 1905, and he married the daughter of the late Baron Mayev de Rothschild, M.P., In 1878. As 1' reported in the cables, he said in the course of his speech that "the' Budget „ established tyranny and inquisition never previously known." He ia a 1 large landowner, but what does the 9 Budget really propose? The provisions 9 have often been given fn those columns, [ but it is interesting to recall them. The land of the British Isles is to 3 be valued as on the 30th of April 3 of this year. In case of any sub--3 sgqiienf.- increase of value of any f portion oi "that iiii/d, which is not I due to the indiistry mni eaeiti.on of the individual owning that land, one-fifth of that increase goes to the State. Half of this one-fifth ; is to be allotted to purposes recog- : nised as national, half to purposes ; recognised as local. 1' Of course there are other taxes, such I as the death duties, but the land tax ' is fhe principal one. How the great land- : owning class txiAff} enjoys the unearned increment ct the ejfpeijse of the general citizen — nine-tenths ikbotit, of the whole people — can "squeal" when railed upon ' to bear a lfttle more of their share of ' the cost of the -government of the country is hard- for New Zealanders to understand.