Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 648, 9 December 1865, Page 4

We make no apology for so often referring to the great duly and necessity of forming roads and bridges in this Province. The subjcct is of vital importance, as we have long ago persistently urged, both to town and country. Indeed it is just as important for the one as it is for the other. Our present object is not to adduce arguments to enforce the importance and duty of making roads, but rather to advance a step further, and show how the means can be ob- • tained for doing so. In discussing this important question, we will first refer to the experience of England and the Continent of Europe on this matter. It appears that the first legislative enactment in England for tlie formation of roads was passed in tho reign of Queen Mary, and provided that the inhabitants of each parish should provide four days' labour, with tools and so forth, in each year, for the making and repairing of roads. The same system of forced labour was in use on the Continent of Europe, and was proved to be very defective and very extravagant. It was found, in fact, to be four times as expensive as a system of money payment from tho people ; and about one hundred years ago a tax on land, according to its value, was substituted for tlie labour contribution of the people. It is from the workings of this Act that the public roads in England and Scotland havo been so vastly increased in number, and so greatly improved. In places where previously many parts of these coun tries were as badly off for roads as in the Province of Auckland at the present moment, excellent roads have been made, and kept in excellent repair to the vast benefit of the entice country. Thus, it is related that no less than a fortnight was consumed in making a journey from Selkirk to Edinburgh and back, a distance of thirty-eight miles. Our bush settlers man complain, and they have a just right to complain; nevertheless, it is thus seen that the countries inhabited by our forefathers for ccnturies were, up till within the last hundred years and less, as badly provided with roads as wo arc after a quarter of a century's experience. It sccnis to ns that we must follow the plan last mentioned as adopted in Great Britain. A tax must bo laid on the land, and that not according to its acreage, but according to its value. To tax land at so much per acre is about as fair and equitable in principle as to levy an equal duty of so much per pound, or per foot, on diamond rings and iron kettles. For we know very well that all land is not of the same value, and a main principle of taxation is to tax value, not bulk. One hundred acres of a certain kind of soil may not be worth so much as ten acres of another kind, and the poor soil may belong to the poor man, ill able to a fiord to pay any tax at all, and the ten acrcs to the richer mail gaining more profit from them, and therefore far better able to pay a tax rate in proportion to the value of the land, than the other person is according to the acreage of it. AVe require that a Domesday or cess book should be compiled, giving the ascertained value of all lauds held by private individuals, and on this we must base our taxation. The thing is by no means as formidable as would at first sight appear. A little system aud division of labour would soon complete the work.

The present Highways Act is admittedly defective. It allows tlie absentee proprietor to prevent roads being made : for a combination of such persons can prevent the Act from being put in motion. Absentee owners of the soil, are, as a rule, an immense evil, and the source of dissension, bad management, and trouble in every country. Ireland has grievously suffered for many a long year from the gigantic evils caused by a race of absentee landlords. We have suffered, and are suffering very greatly, from the selfsame cause. Take one instance :—An owner of between two and three hundred acres of laud, BOine distance from this city, had an adjoining lot offered to him for sale at ten shillings per acre. There was then no" road in the neighbourhood. Tho offer was declined. The firßtnamed party afterward? made a road, spent

a large sum of money in clearing and improving his own laud, and lie then desired to buy the aforementioned lot, and the owner, instead of again risking 10s. an acre, wanted from a pound to thirty shillings an acre for it, because, he said, "You have made a road to it, and my land is so much increased in value in consequence of that road being made by you !" Surely we need say no more in condemnation of the present road-making regulations. The Highways Act must be erased from the statute-book ; and a new Act passed, levying a road and bridge rate 011 every acre of land in the Province owned by private individuals according to its value. Let there bo no option of any district or class, adopting the Act or not, the tax should bo imperatively collected from all owners of land. And the selection of the land, on ITS I'TjBCHASE AT THE LAND OFFICE, not tho having a Crown Grant, should be evidence of ownership and of liability to taxation. No cry either of forty acre men or any other selectors or purchasers should prevent this sweeping and wholesome alteration. Those who do not waut to pay the tax must not select their land. The that they'may leave the colony, and may never have their Crown Grant, has 110 weight whatever. If they choose to select land with the hope of using or selling it, let them not virtually be absentee landholders, either entirely preventing roads being made 011 the block where the land they have selected is situated, or escaping paying then- share towards road construction, and profiting by other men's labours. As the Duke of Wellington said to the officer who did not want to go to a foreign station " sell or sailso we would say to the landowners "sell or pay the rate." Property has its duties, as well as its rights, and 110 man nor man nor set of men have the right to put shackles 011 the wheels of improvement, and leave the vehicle stuck up to the axle-trees in an impassable bush road, and so retard the improvement of the Province. Not having been able to ascertain the acreage owned in the Province by private individuals, we can only make an approximate calculation.

The following is not far from the truth:—

Ifc appears that from ISoS to Acres. ISG3, there were sold . . 514,000 Supposing as mucli were sold before 1555. AYe have another 514,000 And assuming the sales in ISG'I-5 respectively were the same as those of ISG3, this would give 272,000

Or a total of . . 1,300,000 The present rate in some districts is too heavy as a general rate, viz., a shilling an acre.* This would produce £42,500 a year. In ISO 3 the Provincial Government spent on roads and public works £30,000, supposing this could be expended for similar purposes, mainly roads and trainways, and so on, in future years, we have thus at least £02,500 a-year at ouce applicable for opening up the countiy. But the total amount would either increase each year from the annual sale of land, or the rate levied could be reduced. 'That rate should be kept as low as possible. Each county should be divided into districts, hundreds, or ridings, as at home, and should have the general supervision of all the roads made in it, and the collection and control of the expenditure of the rates raised in it. Each hundred or riding should perform similar functions, subsidiary to the County Board. In England the county magistrates form that Board, and they are all landowners, and transact the road business when they meet at quarter sessions. They work gratuitously. They have a paid surveyor or inspector of roads and bridges, who makes his report to them of what has been done and what requires to be done. Their local knowledge enables them to give a good opinion as to what work requires doing; ihe;r self-interest causes them to look carefully after the whole business.

The proportion of public money Riven to any of these County Boards should be in exact proportion to the sums raised in them by the rate levied. The differences and jealousies between town and country as to the share which each ought to have in the Customs revenue would thus be obviated.