DUTY ON GREENSTONE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1847, 31 July 1907, Page 49

DUTY ON GREENSTONE.

In increasing the duty on greenstone the Government is taxing a product that of all products is peculiar to New Zealand. So far as is known greenstone has been discovered only in this country, and for that reason it has become symbolical of the country, and of particular value sentimentally to the native race. The stone age of the Maori ib but yesterday, and the chief relics of Maoridom in the manner of talismanic trinkets exist in the tribal tikis and meres, many of -which have wonderful histories and peculiar associations. The bulk of our greenstone comes from the West Coast, where it is found in river beds and on the sea coast in the form usually of water-worn boulders that give little outward evidence of the beautifully-marked stone that may be within. It is a most difficult stone to cut, so difficult that it took native experts years to fashion the most simple of the implements that were made of greenstone, with the result that such implements were never very numerous, and were always highly valued by their owners. There are only two or three tradesmen in New Zealand who go in for cutting the stone, the bulk of which is shipped away to the Continent, Belgium, and Germany principally, where it is deftly cut into the hundred and one trinkets that may be purchased in any jeweller's. shop. A duty of 20 per cent, has been paid on cut greenstone up till the present, but the new tariff: adds another 10 pier cent, to goods made of the national pebble of New Zealand. So popular has greenstone become that the real article has been imitated to a marvellous degree of perfection, and it would be well, if “the real thing" ia to bear a duty of 30 per cent., that the imitation should be taxed out of existence.