THE MORTGAGE TAX

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8794, 25 July 1914, Page 4

THE MORTGAGE TAX

• Curses, it is said, are like chickens: they come home. For some years the “Reformers” scattered curses of the Mortgage .Tax all over the Dominion. They collected them annually in Parliament, using them for ammunition to drive home demands for the repeal of the tax. They demanded this repeal immediately, if not sooner, they enforced tho demand with all the adjectives in the dictionary, and when the difficulties of the position were urged, they smothered thorn with more adjectives. Weill They are in power now; have been in power for two years and a half; and the mortgage tax still burns the pages of an immortal statute book. Yesterday, Sir Joseph drew their attention to the fact, asking them ironically would they ever repeal it? _ “Not this year,” said the Finance Minister, but nothing would induce him to go further and say when, if ever. Sir Joseph gave him many inducements, but he clung to the mortgage tax. And as he clung, all his own curses and all tho curses of “Reform” rained on his devoted head. As descended, Sir Joseph bantered him remorselessly. The whole body of “Reform ' looked on disconsolate. They know that the tax cannot bo repealed, they know that it is a necessary task, they know that they dare not repeal it, and they know that their demands for its repeal and their denunciations of the Liberal Government were reckless and insincere. They now stand exposed, convicted, ashamed. Wo venture ■to think that yesterday Sir Joseph enjoyed the spectacle of their discomfiture, and that to-das- the public shares his enjoyment. The exceptions will he they who were deceived by tho “Reform” curses, and they will be angry* beyond measure at the deceit pract’sed oil their gullibility hv the monopolists of all the higher virtues.