A FREEHOLDERS' ASSOCIATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11712, 23 July 1901, Page 7

A FREEHOLDERS' ASSOCIATION.

TO THE EDSTOn. Sir,—A letter in your last, Saturday': Supplement, signed "Britons Hold Your Own, suggest that the formation of " an association to resist present and future spoliation and injustice." This is indeed a noble and worthy object, but it is evident that the writer is not referring to injustice in general, but only to what he regards as a special form of injustice, viz., the special taxation of land values. One would think that he must have bean asleep for the last 10 or 15 years, so completely does he ignore the present position of the land question. The fact that the English Government was compelled to pass a Fair Rent Bill and that the New Zealand Government was compelled, to abolish the property tax, and to substitute a land tax, has completely removed the kind from the category of labour products, and has established a distinot line of cleavrage between the two. That there is no analogy whatever between them is shown'by the fact that while taxation makes labour products more difficult to obtain, it makes the land more easily accessible; and the land is the only source of our living. The question therefore henceforth must be, not whether land should be treated the same as labour products in the matter of taxation, but rather to what extent should it be subject to differential treatment? It is clearly in the interests of all that we should avoid the taxation whioh renders it more difficult to supply our wants, and that we should advocate taxation which makes more easily accessible the land from which alone those wants can be supplied. Your correspondent demands " equitable taxation." Let him look at our tariff and blush for its iniquity; let him read that scandalous list of 310 items of labour products, all taxed from a mimimum of 20 per cent, on cotton counterpanes, up to 200 per cent, on the workman's solitary luxury, tobacco. Labour has sweated to produce those things, and has paid tribute to the landlord for permission to do so, yet it •is further penalised from 20 to 200 per- cent, before it is allowed to make use of " them! This is, apparently our friend's idea of " equitable taxation," for he utters on protest against it, but when itis proposed to place a small tax, say, 3d in the £ (or about li per oent.) on a privilege value which is created, not by ■ labour. - b>; by an unjust monopoly of our common heritage, the earth, then he goes into hysterics, and shrieks " spoliation" I— am, etc., f Another Briton.