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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9086, 21 June 1888, Page 4

We do not know why it is, but the unfortunate bachelor seems the butt of every wiseacre that ventilates his flippant opinions on social affairs. One lot of people regard him as a miserably helpless person in a chronic state of unhappiness from the lack of buttons on his shirts and the presence of rips and rents in his apparel: while another set of people appear to be actuated by a malicious envy of his freedom from encumbrances, and of the general jollity of his monastic condition. Of the latter class are those who iom time to time conceive the inhuman idea of imposing a special tax on bachelors. One is disposed to give every latitude in times like these, when duty to one's country compels a member of Parliament to rack his brains to discover anything in the heavens above and the earth beneath and in the waters under the earth that can be subjected to the squeeze of taxation; and it is easy to understand how the whole category being almost exhausted, and everything from the cradle to the coffin having been forced to pay _ toll, the honorable member for Itangitikei, Mr. Bruce, must have been hard pushed for a subject when he fastened on the bachelor, proposing, as ho has done in his place in the House, to subject bachelors to special taxation. Now why lie should do so surpasses our powers of reason. Why should a man be taxed for the mere reason that he has not married Apart from the fact that it many not have been his fault, but his misfortune, a wife is admittedly a luxury; and all recognised fiscal principles go to say that luxuries should be taxed, and reason far more conclusive could be shown why the married man should be called on to pay a duty for his wife. It is all right enough to flippantly say that he is taxed already, and heavily taxed in milliners' bills and other incidentals to the possession of a mistress of his household. Serve him right; he voluntarily undertook the obligation, and cannot plead ignorance of the consequences'; and if he will have luxuries, he ought to pay for them. As for the bachelor, he has refrained from indulgence in such a luxury—leading a simple and economical life, and entailing no responsibilities, which, in the chapter ot events, may become a burthen to the State, by filling the orphanages, or even the industrial schools; and the idea of taxing him while he only partook of the necessaries of life, and scrupulously avoided its luxuries, is so utterly opposed to all the principles that ordinarily regulate the imposition of fiscal burthens, that the proposal could only emanate from the mind of a man imbued with the tyrannical feeling arising from the thought of belonging to a dominant majority that can do as it likes. That the so-called benedicts are in a majority of those who have come to man's estate is not to be denied ; but what warrant does that give them for saying that the helpless minority shall be subjected to oppression merely because of their having exercised their freedom of choice, and been more careful in guarding their feet amid the snares and pitfalls by which they have been surrounded ? Like the fox who had got his tail cut oft' in a trap, these married men affect the belief that the bachelors ought for their own interest be forced to eschew the delights of celibacy ; while in their heart of hearts they sigh for the days of boon companionship, when, with latchkey in pocket, they could come home when they pleased without the dread of being called to account for where they had spent their leisure hours; and, with an affected interest in the bachelor's welfare, which is only chagrin and spitefulness, they say he ought to be taxed into what, with gruesome irony, they grimly call the " blissful" estate ot matrimony. When we think of the special trials and snares to which unprotected men are exposed in this particular year—being leap yearwe teel inclined to throw the Jegis of our protection around them, and we denounce as cruel and unjust, and as opposed to all correct principles of fiscal economy, this proposal of the member for Rangitikei to impose a special tax on bachelors.