UNEMPLOYMENT TAX.

Southland Times, Issue 21431, 27 June 1931, Page 10

UNEMPLOYMENT TAX.

To The Editor.

Sir, —I read in Wednesday’s issue a long letter by “Brian Boru” in which there is the usual assertions that to stand up for equal rights and no more for all, is “bigotry,” want of “charity,” “pettiness”, “ranting,” and “bad taste.” Protestants know what value to place on that.

Your correspondent adds nothing to the facts of the discussion, that sectarian exemptions have been made, to use a famous parliamentary expression, “secretly, silently, surreptitiously,” in the interests of an indeterminate number of Roman Catholic priests and religious orders. Your correspondent says Roman Catholics are not mentioned in the Act, neither were they in the Stallworthy Hospital Act. That is just the trick of it, and a trick of the kind, on a historic occasion, cost a king his crown. It was precisely this same trick that King James II used when he issued his famous declaration offering to suspend the penal laws against “non-conformists.” This meant Romanists and Puritans alike. “The people,” says Dr. Carnegio Simpson, “saw through this seemingly generous gesture. They saw that it was part of the King’s deep plot for the restoration of Romanism in England.” Puritans like Baxter, Bunyan, and Howe refused the relief that was made not for them, but for Rome. The famous seven Bishops of the Church of England refused to read his declaration from their pulpits, and were sent to the Tower. Amid intense popular excitement they were tried for sedition, and amid frantic enthusiasm of the country were acquitted. It was not long before William of Orange came over in response to an invitation to save “the Protestant religion and the liberties of England,” and history tells the rest. Rome is always the same. She will conceal her methods and will readily seduce pliable protestants, kings or people, to carry out her plans. The Stallworthy Hospital Act, and this Romish exemption from paying a tax laid on men out of employment and on even the oldest men of slenderist means, will, I hope, cost the seat of every man in Parliament responsible for it. —I am, etc., P. B. FRASER. Juno 25, 1931.