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Timaru Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 5353, 4 February 1892, Page 2

Colonel Goeton, of the well known North Island firm of Stevens and Gorton, is at present m England, and has bad-excellent opportunities of judging how the Ministerial taxation proposals have been received on the other side of tbe world. He is a man of high character and excellent business capacity, and his opinions and statements on the subject of this taxation ure worthy of attention. The Rangitihci Advocate has just published a letter which wus recently received from him, and we venture to think that the following extract from it will be read with considerable interest. He says : — " 1 must now quit the subject of stock and sport, and deal with one which has a far more Berious effect just now vc New Zealand, and that is this wretched Land Assessment Bill which has been passed m the last New Zealand Parliament, It is simply doing New Zealand a vast amount of harm here. This taxing of men who send out money for investment (what we so much want to develop the country) is the most insane thing that has ever been done yet, and will undoubtedly keep a great deal of capital avpay from the country. I have clients who are sending money out, but this tax has frightened them very much, and, m one instance, a man of undoubted financial ability recommended my client strongly to well consider it, as he considered the laws just passed m New Zealand put a set at once on sending out capital there for investment. And the real truth of it is that tbiß tax will not fall upon the mortgagee, but upon the unfortunate borrower, who will have to pay a higher rate of interest m consequence. Again, there is another feeling ; it is considered tbat settlers were encouraged to take up large blocks of land, which they did on the faith of being allowed to work them, and that this graduated scale of tax to injure the large holders is simply the first spoke of repudiation on the part of lhe colonists. They don't blame the country for making laws to prevent large sales of Crown lands now to individuals, but they do very much the mode of no>v injuring those who took up land under old regulations, with the faith that snob an Act as has now been, passed would never have been dreamt of."