FISCAL REFORM AND LOAN CONVERSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11540, 27 November 1900, Page 7

FISCAL REFORM AND LOAN CONVERSION.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l welcome Mr. Flurscheim's letter on land nationalisation. A Continental thinker will let in some new views, probably advanced, and when true, they will stick. I believe Michelet's inferences from the peasant proprietors (in France) extreme subdivision of land, show that the notary, who is often the village banker, in arranging for the sons who have the land hunger, to pay out those co-heirs who do not choose to till the soil, helps to saddle tho cultivators, through interest or rent, with a burden they can only cope with by working many minutes per day longer than their old father worked in his time, and nothing but the love of a free,outdoor life, drinking the worst of the wine and selling the best, would reconcile them to their lot. ' When our sapient legislators gleefully snatched at present relief from an incidence of taxation by converting loans and adding to tho principal of the debt they omitted consideration of this point, about which they were warned by the actuaries Sir Dillon Bell consulted. How much wool or grain, or a mixture of our staple exports, was required to pay the interest on a pound sterling when we raised the' loan? Afterwards, when we renewed the contract by paying 107 to 111, and even 117 of a new debenture for the cancellation _ of tho old £100, sold too frequently at a discount, how much wool, etc., is required to pay the interest during the course of the new contract, 50 years? This is a digression, but really is part of the land question Mr. Hardy and Mr. Flurscheim are discussing. If Messrs. Hardy and Flurscheim had read wills filed at Somerset House, and noted the lawful charges, dowry, educational, etc., coming in before the great landlord picks anything, and if they saw tho plasters or blisters on the ducal estates they would not reach tho conclusions they wish to impart. For very many years interest in the great financial world dropped Is and a few pence per annum. That in Now Zealand made conversion possible, but not profitable, I maintain, having regard to posterity. But I think they would recognise there is a sleeping partner, often holding preference shares with tho great landlord whom it is the fashion to regard through " social pest" spectacles. If you got rid of him you equally destroy the accumulated premiums assuring the lives of working-men, tradesmen, professional men, etc. Protract the process by single tax, land nationalisation, as you may, the freeholder will still squeal whilst you are plucking his feathers. This letter is too long to demonstrate that dividing up the rental of Great Britain amongst the people residing there is on a par with the autocrats who worked the French Revolution.—l an», etc., H.G.