A TAX UPON BACHELORS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 978, 28 November 1890, Page 31

A TAX UPON BACHELORS.

This subject continues to exercise the minds of the readers of one of the ladies’ miscellanies. Prizes, apparently, are being given for solutions of the pioblems suggested, and the solutions themselves are invariably interesting, not to say instructive. On the whole, we are glad to say, the topic is treated with much less truculence than might have been expected. One young lady, indeed, seems to think that men are leagued together to prevent women from getting employment, and that that being so, they should be forced, by taxation, to support the sex thus injured. But this is rather off the line. The question ia whether the bachelor should be taxed, and we are bound to say that much consideration is shown for that erring and unhappy person. Wo gather that there would be war to the knife with the man who refused flatly to “ propose ” to any lady—who was, in fact, aconfirmed oldbachelor and revelled in his enormity. But if any bachelor could show irrefragably that he had made bona fide efforts to escape from his solitary and melancholy condition, it seems clear that the ladies, as a body, would be willing to let him off with either a nominal import or no fine at all. Obviously there would be nothing for him’ but pity and regret \ besides, might not some damsel come forward of her own accord to take away from him the reproaoh under which he laboured ? If he refused all such offep, then, no doubt, it would be necessary to give him exemplary punishment. Another instance in which there would, wegather, be dispensation, is that of the bachelor who could prove that he was supporting out of his income one or more female relatives. Yes ; the ladies are not implacable, nor, in all cases, umeasonable. They recognise that there are circumstances in which bachelor, hood, if regrettable, is nevertheless not wholly to be condemned.